


Scenes Of A Lesser War

by red_to_black



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Minor Injuries, Slash, god-tier emo stuff right here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-01 20:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10929033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_to_black/pseuds/red_to_black
Summary: Brett's world is reduced to fifty square meters, with Liam at its epicenter.





	1. Bifurcation

**Author's Note:**

> i bet you all thought i was dead lol
> 
> so, warnings: mentions of medical procedures, discussions of disease and death; mentions of past child abuse, medical trauma, and i think that's about it for now. please don't read if any of these things are going to upset you
> 
> this has been my baby for a really long time and i'm not gonna pretend that most of the medical stuff is factual lol so please be gentle! i hope you guys enjoy <3

**Bifurcation: to divide into two parts or branches**

~*~

Liam usually wakes sometime between the hours of four and five in the morning, and Brett is usually there to witness it; the slight change in breathing, more purposeful as he heads towards wakefulness; the shift and flutter of body and bone and skin and eyelashes; the way he leans his head into Brett's hand, allowing his fingers to push through his hair.

Brett doesn't rush him. Around them, the world sleeps; the sun hasn't come up, and won't for hours, and snow drifts down outside. 

Some mornings, Liam will wake with purpose and get up, almost straight away - pad across their apartment in nothing but his boxers and unprotected feet and not even hiss at the cold of the floorboards seeping into his skin. He'll do one of two things, then - go to the coffee machine and turn it on so it whirrs, comforting white noise in the still silence of the morning, or head to the bathroom, leaving the door ajar as he turns on the light and leans over to wash his face.

Other mornings, Brett can feel Liam's drive to move seep out of him the moment he becomes aware of his surroundings; the way his muscles tense and slump with defeat, or how he nudges into Brett's hand and whispers, "Let's stay in bed," even though he's supposed to leave for work in half an hour.

It's not like anyone would blame Liam for not going in. They can't. Liam is covered in scars and has been nearly bled dry more than once; scenes Brett wasn't present for, but feels all the same. He chooses his hours. He goes to the clinic for five hours in the morning, arrives home in the early afternoon covered in bandages and shivering and weak, and Brett takes care of him.

Brett always takes care of him.

"Don't go," Brett murmurs when Liam begins to rise from the bed. "Not today."

Liam's smile twitches despondently against the skin of his shoulder. "You said that yesterday." But he hasn't moved, and he did go yesterday, and Brett feels how languid and slow his movements are, hesitant, and thinks - with a little thrill of fear - that maybe Liam's too weak to go anywhere today.

"I'll make you French toast," Brett hedges, because he can feel Liam's reluctance to go as deeply as he feels his own desire for Liam to stay. "With honey. Cinnamon, if we have it."

"Brett..." And he can hear the longing in Liam's voice, the quiet desperation of someone who's going to do exactly what they don't want to simply because it's right, and damn Liam's moral compass - "They need... they need more..."

"They can get it from someone else," Brett murmurs, and he rolls on top of Liam and pins him down with his weight, what Liam weighs and then some extra forty pounds, and it used to be less than that, but... "There are others."

Liam looks up at him, finally. His eyes are soft from exhaustion and his hair is messy, flopping back from his face, a shock of dark brown against the sheets, and his eyes almost match the blue winter light beginning to seep in from behind the curtains. 

"I almost passed out on the tube yesterday," Liam admits, and Brett's gut lurches as he stares down at him, but he doesn't say anything, because Liam never tells him anything about what happens when he goes to the clinic. "If I went today I..."

"So stay," Brett pleads. "Just today. And I'll make you French toast."

Finally, Liam cracks a smile of his own, tentative but sincere. "Yeah."

~*~

Liam's slow moving out of bed, wincing, and Brett helps him to the bathroom. The fan whirrs to life as he turns the light on, and instead of heading straight to the sink or shower, Liam calmly gets on his knees in front of the toilet.

"Liam-"

"I'd really rather you didn't, you know, watch..." He trails off, closes his eyes and mouth and takes a deep breath in through his nose, and Brett leaves - not because he doesn't want to see Liam puking, but because he'd rather it be over soon, and Liam won't do it if Brett's there.

He stands with his hands clenched around the edge of the countertop and watches the clock's second hand move as Liam vomits. He can't really hear anything - a few gasps, and some spitting, but the fan drowns out almost everything else - and he prays. Thinks about it really hard, and wonders if this is why his mother turned to religion.

Fifteen minutes later, Liam wanders out, white as a sheet and still moving slowly and weakly. "Sorry," he whispers.

"It's okay." Brett puts his hand between Liam's shoulders as he comes closer. "What...?"

"They used new drugs yesterday." Liam leans on him, closes his eyes, swallows. "I guess... they didn't agree with me."

~*~

This is what Brett sees when he dreams:

A big bed. King sized, probably. The house is mostly white, surrounded by a warm, red brick fence, and there are trees and grass and nobody else around for miles.

They have a trampoline. They have a trampoline because they have children. The children are theirs, somehow. And the dog belongs to all of them.

The only familiar thing in his dream is Liam, but in name only; this Liam moves with grace and strength that Brett hasn't seen from the real Liam in almost a year, and he looks like light trapped in a physical body.

Light, and nothing else.

~*~

"Like this?"

"Yeah."

Liam wiggles the spatula under the toast and flips it. "Might make a chef out of me yet," he says, and his smile, when Brett laughs, is adorably shy.

"Maybe. Hungry?"

"A little, yeah." 

This will be Brett's job today: to get Liam to eat. Protein, as much of it as he can, followed by fats and carbs, also as much as he can; he doesn't do it so that the technicians at the clinic have an easier job. He does it because he wants Liam to be as strong as he can be. But every visit, he comes back a little weaker, and he never fully bounces back.

He used to, in the beginning; Brett thought he was growing resistant to the treatments, initially, because Liam complained less and less of the pain and didn't stay in bed as long and didn't cry or bleed or puke as much. But he was wrong, of course, like he is about a lot of things - Liam just got better at hiding his suffering. Brett hates that; hates the suffering, hates not being able to do anything, hates Liam's reluctance to cause him pain.

Even though he's in pain because of Brett.

~*~

Liam falls asleep on the couch before eleven.

Brett takes advantage of it; he heads to their bed, just a mattress on the ground, braced only by a wooden pallet Liam had made just after finishing a carpentry apprenticeship. He stands, for a moment; stares down at the sheets, the plain grey pillowcases and fitted sheet topped by a navy blue duvet cover.

Liam's sessions have never been easy, but in the beginning, they were harder; he would go in on Monday morning, like it was work, or a regular job; by midday, he's be home, in pain, bleeding, and too weak to move any further than the short distance between the bed and the bathroom.

These sheets have seen more blood and bleach than regular sheets have. Liam's blood, specifically, leaking from lifted edges of poorly applied bandages. And then, the bleach; Brett, putting Liam on the couch, listening to him mumble tearfully _I'm sorry; I'm sorry I'm a pain in the ass; I'm sorry I'm bleeding_ ; the bleach smells like Brett crying as he scrubbed and scrubbed at the stains until they finally came up, hours later, with his skin raw from chemicals and Liam's face dirty and salty from tears. 

They've learned better, now, he and Liam and the doctors at the clinic; the doctors know how to ease the pain before it really gets a grip, and Brett learned how to do a nice, skintight bandage that would stop infection and bleeding and let Liam sleep through the night, and then some. He learned that a combination of fish oil, biotin and iron pills supplement Liam's diet just enough to keep him strong when he can't quite eat, and that natural melatonin sources can help him sleep past the pain.

He pulls the pillowcases off the pillows, even the big body pillow Liam uses on the bad nights, replaces them with new soft ones; next is the fitted sheet, and there's a spot of blood around where Liam's hip usually rests, and Brett puts it in the "bleach, aggressively" pile, because if there's anything he can't stand more than the smell of bleach it's the sight of blood.

He changes all the sheets. The bed smells like "coastal sunshine", because Brett bought the wrong laundry powder when he did their grocery shop last week. Really it just smells like a slightly different arrangement of chemical compounds which - combined with the little suns and hibiscus flowers on the distinctly feminine box it came in - are supposed to foster feeling of warmth and comfort. Brett wonders who the company thinks they're tricking; nobody in this city truly knows what "coastal sunshine" smells like.

Can sunshine even have a smell?

Liam turns on the couch, onto his back, his arm flopping down until his knuckles brush the floor. His fingertips are blue, almost always but today moreso, and Brett covers him in a soft, fluffy blanket he's fairly sure Liam's grandmother gave them when it became apparent that Liam was going to go through with it, despite everyone's protests.

Liam's eyelids flutter sleepily. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Ditched out on you again, huh?"

"Only for a little while. Only an hour or so," Brett hedges.

There are bigger things going on in their world than the smell of bleach and bloody laundry but in that moment, Brett can't think of a single one; Liam's eyes are bluer than anything he's ever seen before he thinks, even the distant memories of the ocean he has, and Brett's entire world has become narrowed down to this human, this horribly and dangerously fragile person lying on their couch and blinking up at him fondly.

"Jesus, dude," Liam says, and he smiles with one corner of his mouth tilted up lopsidedly and his left eyebrow arching, and in that moment, he's Liam, Brett's Liam - Liam who comes home with no more serious an injury than a splinter, smelling of sawdust and wood polish and turps, looking only exhaustedly satisfied, and not hurt. Not like _that_. Like _this_.

"You're lookin' at me like I'm on death's door, wiping shit off the bottom of my shoe," Liam says, and the humour is still there so Brett allows himself a fragile smile. "I'm not dyin'. Take a load off and relax already."

"I don't relax," Brett says, but the sheets are bleached and in the laundry washing so he sits down, puts Liam's legs in his lap and leans a little, so he can touch Liam's face.

"I know," Liam says, his voice a little more tired than amused. "I'm tired enough without worrying about your neurotic ass."

"You chose me, you're stuck with me," Brett says, trying to smile. If it weren't for him, Liam might not have decided to do it. Wouldn't be getting up at four or five in the morning and joining the peak hour commute to the hospital; wouldn't be coming home bloody and bruised and close to breaking point.

Close, Brett reminds himself, but never there. He knows what breaking point looks like. They both do.

Almost everyone does.

~*~

It's been five weeks since Liam started going to the clinic in the mornings and it's a predictably rainy day in the middle of October when Brett reaches the edge, then hurls himself off it.

It's the bleach that does it; Liam's had a rough night, _another_ rough night in a string of rough nights and his eyes are leaking tears like his body doesn't know what to do other than force him to cry, and Brett's about ready to shove a needle in his arm to make up for the lack of fluids, but he doesn't quite reach that point because Liam bleeds onto the clean, snowy white tiles of the bathroom floor where he's sitting and Brett loses it.

He moves Liam, a little, the lump in his throat growing with every mumbled, tearful apology Liam utters, and water doesn't get the stain up, and soap doesn't get the stain up, and when he initially opens the bleach Liam pukes at the smell and apologises for that, as well, and Brett's entire world narrows down to a pinprick, and the pinprick looks something like this: Liam, coughing, spitting up bile and getting it on his shirt, blood dripping down onto the tiles, and then the pinprick blurs like a fingerprint on the lens of a camera.

"Stop it," he hears himself say, distantly. "You have to fucking stop it."

Liam - groggy from the drugs and pain and lack of proper rest - just looks at him blearily and says, "No."

"God damn it, Liam! This isn't-"

"It's for you," Liam whispers. "C'mon, please don't be mad at me. I can't fight right now."

They've fought before, about this and other things, and Liam's always more than risen to the challenge - he's fiery even when tempered by his I.E.D medication and he always fights back, and they yell and ignore each other but they've never landed blows, and they don't ever go to sleep without saying _goodnight, I love you_ ; Liam's never begged him to not start anything, before.

"Okay," Brett says, and his voice breaks and he watches Liam's face crumble before he turns it away and presses it against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. "Liam, you have to stop-"

"For you. Not doing it for anyone else."

His voice is wrecked and maybe that's why Brett lets it drop, for now, so he can retrieve a glass of water and help Liam rinse his mouth, then drink; he watches Brett with red, puffy eyes over the rim of the glass.

"I miss carpentry," he mumbles when Brett takes the glass away, then coughs. "I miss making things."

Brett licks his lips and he tastes like tears. "You could-"

"No," Liam snaps weakly, and then he vomits, tinged with blood, all over himself, and the noise he makes is so painful and frustrated that it ends the conversation entirely.

~*~

He doesn't puke like that anymore; the drugs are better, the technology is moving along faster, and Liam seems to have adjusted to it, which Brett is simultaneously grateful for and sickened by. 

He makes Liam chicken noodles. They're not all that healthy but Liam loves them, their flavour, which seems to be the only thing he can taste the day after visiting the clinic. Brett can't say no, even as the smell makes him feel sick when he sits down and turns on the TV.

The news is on. It's never good, but they keep watching, hoping one day it will be.

"More people are dead," Liam says softly. "I should've gone in today."

"It would've killed you, Li," Brett murmurs, and he's a little relieved when Liam leans against him and sighs like a concession.

"Are they getting closer, do you think?" Brett asks.

Liam shrugs. "Hard to say. They don't tell us anything, really. They just kind of... take what they need, dope us up on meds, let us go, and hope we don't walk into traffic. But they've been taking less from me. More from other people. Older people, and kids." He looks up at Brett; the heat of the noodles in soup has brought colour to his cheeks. "Are you... you know...?"

"Symptomatic?" Brett sighs. "No. All the more reason for you to stop."

"You don't have it now," Liam says shortly. "Doesn't mean you won't. Doesn't mean you're immune. You've just been able to be careful, that's all."

"Yeah, because of you sticking your neck out for me," Brett says, frustrated. "I never said they didn't pay you well. I still don't think they pay you enough, but-"

Liam rubs his face. "Didn't mean to start anything," he says exhaustedly. "Sorry."

Brett rubs his face. "Me too," he murmurs. "Hey, I changed the sheets."

Liam's not listening; he's watching the TV with a vaguely distraught expression. "I wish they'd just figure it out," he mumbles. "Like, fuck, how much of us do they need to take? And if it's terminal once you've got it, then why the fuck are we treating people with shit we know doesn't work?"

"Have to try," Brett says, even though he's in wholehearted agreement. "But hey, look. They've progressed to human trials."

"Round seven," Liam mumbles miserably. 

~*~

"Yo, Brett."

He looks up; Liam's just closing the apartment door, tracking sawdust and dirt in on the bottom of his boots, and smiling at Brett from beneath a flop of brown hair.

"Hey," Brett says, watching with vague amusement as Liam strips off his neon work shirt in the doorway to reveal his chest - ridiculous tans and tattoos of dubious origins revealed in all their glory. "What's up?"

"Got take out," Liam says cheerfully, dumping a bag on the counter top. 

"Panda Express?"

"Mr. Singh's," Liam replies, grinning. "I know you aren't a cheap date." He approaches Brett with the grin still firmly in place and a saunter in his step. "You haven't even taken your tie off."

"What can I say? I was distracted."

"By what?"

"A really hot carpenter walked through my front door and started stripping."

"That _slut_ ," Liam says cheerfully. "Did you tell him you're taken?"

"I was gonna, but then he kind of walked over and grabbed me and had his way with me."

"Predicting the future, huh? Serious shit right there." And Liam grabs his tie and drags him down and kisses him, and he tastes like sweat and sawdust and the dumplings he's undoubtedly already poached from the takeout boxes, and it's kind of gross but Brett wouldn't trade it for anything. 

Liam leans back, licks his lips, and tilts his head a little to the left, displaying the tendon in his throat. "Brett," he whispers.

Brett swallows; damn Liam and damn his stupid amounts of sex appeal and damn Brett's inability to resist, even after years. "Mm, um, yeah?"

"I want a puppy," Liam whispers, and Brett blinks, then jerks back; Liam's face splits into a grin, and he laughs as he grabs for Brett and tries to pull him close again. "Aw, don't-"

"You seduced me to tell me you want a puppy?" Brett splutters. "You're such a - a-"

"The world you're looking for is cocktease," Liam says, and he pushes Brett down onto the couch and climbs on top of him. "Which I would only be if I didn't intend on following through with this."

Later, when they're lying on the couch in their boxers, sleepy and sated by sex and good Chinese takeout, Brett rolls to grab the remote and flip through the channels aimlessly. He likes documentaries, but Liam is shamelessly obsessed with reality TV shows, and they squabble for a few minutes over whether to watch Animal Planet or Big Brother.

The squabbling is abruptly ended by an emergency news broadcast; scenes of a hospital emergency room overlayed with the presenter speaking about a new, previously undocumented disease spreading rapidly through the city's homeless population. 

"Poor people," Liam sighs, giving up his fight for the remote and wiping his dumpling-greased fingers on Brett's thigh. "Like they don't have it rough enough already."

"Ew," Brett mumbles, shoving Liam a little. "Yeah. But hey, swine flu and bird flu and all that were "pandemics" too. And they killed less people than normal flu does. It'll be the CDC and WHO overreacting, as per usual."

"Still," Liam says around a mouthful of sweet and sour pork, "sucks for the people who are really sick."

"Hmm," Brett murmurs. "They'll do something about it."

"Not before it kills off most of the homeless population." Liam looks sad still. "They're people too."

 _If only everyone thought like you do, Li_ , Brett thinks, and he watches Liam's chest rise and fall and raises a hand to stroke lightly at the smattering of chest hair, and in this memory, Brett is startled by him - by his strength, his pink health, the dark gold of his tan from working in the summer, his aliveness.

If Brett had known it would change, he might have gone about everything differently.

~*~

The bathroom smells like bleach.

Brett stands there, staring muzzily at his surroundings, until Liam makes a light noise next to him - meant to interrupt his train of thought - and says, "So, shower?"

Liam's gotten good at pretending nothing's happening. That he's fine; that the smell of bleach lingering on all their sheets and in their laundry isn't because he sometimes bleeds through his bandages. 

"Do you have nightmares?" Brett asks.

Liam looks at him. "About?" Judging by his expression, he knows what Brett's going to ask; he's already stealing himself against it, and Brett can see it in the tension curled around his muscles like boa constrictors.

"The procedures."

They don't talk about it. They never really have. Liam comes home bleeding and sick; Brett takes care of him and knows that it's for a good cause. This crosses the ambiguous, blurry line Liam's drawn in the sand between them.

Brett hates that line. It didn't used to be there, before. Now it is.

"No," Liam says, surprising Brett. "I don't."

"Why not?"

"I chose to do it. Nobody forced me."

Brett swallows. "I do. Have nightmares, that is."

"About what?" Liam asks curiously. "Getting infected? You haven't been outside in-"

"Something happening to you," Brett murmurs. "They're always about you."

~*~

The pandemic is sweeping, unavoidable, and all-encompassing.

Within weeks millions of people are infected and almost five hundred thousand are dead; there's no way to tell how it spreads, and the world descends slowly into lockdown and chaos, with only important people leaving their houses to function in their jobs.

Liam's a carpenter. He's not good at school or math or writing, but he can make things, almost intuitively, build a birdhouse out of scrapped firewood and a pallet for their bed in less than a day; the night it's finished, they fuck, to test the sturdiness of course, and Brett comes inside Liam while he holds Liam's head down, his fingers tangled into Liam's chocolate brown hair and he's murmuring like a prayer; _Liam, you're amazing, you're amazing. I love you, Li. You're so smart_ , and Liam comes with a gasp onto bedsheets that haven't yet seen blood stains.

"You get off on praise," Brett says.

"I have daddy issues," Liam replies, and Brett laughs even though he knows it's true and shouldn't. "You knew that."

He turns his head, and Liam's smiling at him and ruts against his hip suggestively and even while there's a pandemic sweeping the globe and anyone could be next, Brett thinks that Liam is his world. The world fades out; it's only them, and their apartment, and their sheets that haven't been bleached yet, and their bodies, belonging to each other only.

"I love you," he whispers into Liam's neck, later, and Liam shivers underneath him and moans and digs his heels into Brett's back. "Mm, Liam, I love you."

~*~

He wakes to Liam's body rising from the sheets.

The first word out of his mouth is _no_ ; the second is _please_ ; the third is garbled as he tries to follow Liam up and out, only for Liam to press him back and look at him with uncharacteristic emotion.

"You make it hard for me to leave," he whispers, and he kisses Brett's forehead. "We all have to chip in, Brett. Anyone who can. Or we won't..."

He soothes Brett for a while, but by five thirty he's gone and Brett's awake and pacing and wondering what's happening and wishing he could at least go with Liam to these things, to watch out for him, so he doesn't have to stagger home alone and bleeding and half-drugged.

That's not their reality. Their reality is this: a global disease pandemic, all-encompassing, fatal to every person who contracts it, always two steps, four steps, six steps ahead; a very small group of people who are, somehow, immune, but not producing antibodies in their blood; technology that can't keep up with the disease's mutations and a strained healthcare system overwhelmed with the sick and the dying.

Their reality is this: Liam, staggering out the door at five in the morning; Brett pacing, anxiously, hoping their bed sheets dry in time that he can change them if need be; Liam, almost falling through the doorway with exhaustion and Brett, always there to catch him but never there to bring him home. 

~*~

"Do you think we're being punished?"

It's three in the morning. Liam's feverish, again, and sweating out the final stages of an adverse reaction to new medication. 

They're in the bathroom. Liam's puked twice and Brett has to hold his head up each time. His shoulder is bleeding today, and bruised, but he won't let Brett touch.

"Punished?" Brett asks. "For what?"

Liam licks his lips, accepts the water Brett offers him. "Mowed down the forests," he croaks. "Dried up the rivers and oceans, melted the ice caps. Stalked and killed the animals. Built cities so far into the sky we don't remember trees being big, or what the ground looks like." 

He's right. "Or the ocean," Brett murmurs.

"The ocean," Liam whispers. "Yeah, yeah. We killed her."

"Who?"

"Mother nature. We killed her. Maybe we're being punished. Maybe the whole goddamn planet wants us dead and gone." 

Brett wants to refuse, but maybe that is it. The truth is that the human population isn't sustainable and hasn't been for decades; there are more people than plants, than animals, than water or viable land. He wouldn't blame Mother Nature for kicking out her rebellious teenage children.

"Maybe," he murmurs, watching Liam sadly. "Maybe."

Liam leans his head against the wall. "We deserve it."

"Not all of us," Brett says, putting his hand on Liam's neck and feeling his pulse race. "Not you."

~*~

Summer. It's lacrosse tryouts; Brett's co-captain and so thoroughly unprepared for Liam Dunbar crash-landing into his life it's laughable. 

He likes Liam the moment he sees him, or the look of him, anyway; bouncy energy, confidence, a seemingly permanent, amused slant to the side of his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes, like he's in on a joke nobody else is. 

"Here for lacrosse tryouts?" Brett asks him, because Liam's the first person who approaches him - the others are taller than him and bigger but they shy from Brett because he's older, and Liam? Liam strides right up to him and plants his feet and isn't the slightest bit dissuaded that he has to physically look up to see Brett. He still seems amused, and Brett wants to lick that tilting corner of his mouth until it softens around a moan.

"Coach said you could use a few good players." Liam's smirk is cocky and his eyes are glittering with barely-restrained mirth. And Brett - Brett sees something, then; Liam's eyes flicker over his body, interested at first, then a little heated, and his tongue flicks out to wet his soft, plump lips. Brett's gut lurches like it's saying _this is it; this little shit is going to be the love of your life and he's going to fucking ruin you, and you're going to love it._

"Yeah," Brett says, and Liam's grin widens again, almost imperceptibly. "Depends on the team, though."

Suspicion confirmed: Liam's left eyebrow rises, the grin fades a little, and his eyes darken. "Yours, dude," he says, and Brett returns that with a grin of his own.

It doesn't take them long to fuck after that. No first date required; Liam makes first line in the team right off the bat and he's amazing, all speed and grace and reckless aggression and he's everything Brett's ever wanted to be but isn't, and his nerve endings feel like they're on fire just watching the guy.

Two hours after tryouts, they're slamming the door to Brett's dorm room open and then shut; Liam's all over him, hands up his shirt and mouth on his, messily, and then his chin, and he rocks against Brett's hand when Brett reaches down.

"I haven't been gay for long," Liam gasps as they separate.

"That's not how it works-"

He pushes Brett back, onto the bed, and climbs on top before stripping his shirt off and smirking; there's a tattoo in the middle of his chest, some kind of bird. "It does for me," he says confidently. "I'm different to anyone else."

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

Liam grins. "By the end of the night, you're gonna be in love with me," he says, and he's leaning down and moving lower and his fingers slip the zip of Brett's fly down as he says, "don't say I didn't warn you."

~*~

Brett opens his eyes.

The memory is a vivid one. Liam, eighteen years old and full of wild, reckless energy, nowhere even being close to tempered by other peoples' expectations or judgments of him. Liam had been like a drug, and Brett, like most addicts, was hooked after his first hit.

Liam sleeps beside him now, tucked into the crook of Brett's arm with his wounded shoulder facing towards the ceiling. He's pale, but the fever is gone and the wound, by some small miracle, hasn't bled overnight.

He looks. For a really long time, he just looks; he hasn't done this much, hasn't immersed himself in Liam's presence and being in so long that it feels foreign to do so now, in the weak midwinter light. Liam, twenty pounds lighter than he was when Brett met him; sicker, shakier, but stronger somehow, and still untempered by the world.

Brett wonders if that fire will ever die. If one day he'll wake cold and shaking to find it snuffed. 

"How did we get here?" Brett murmurs, watching Liam's eyelashes flutter.

"Well," the sleepy voice rumbles - somewhere around his armpit - "when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..."

And Brett laughs. Because Liam's his drug, and drugs, when you're an addict, have a way of making you feel better and miserable all at once.

~*~  
Liam's eighteen when they meet and a whole lot of anger and passion and unbridled self-confidence. He's not like anyone else Brett's ever met, and Brett's captivated by him. 

Brett still remembers it; his memory is better than his current perception of the world, and everything in his brain is recalled in vivid technicolour. He remembers the blue of Liam's eyes contrasted against almost every colour imaginable; against the black backdrop of a moonless night, the lifeless grey of the college dorm room exteriors, and the white, white tiles of Brett's RA bathroom.

His gut twists; the smell of Liam's chicken noodles takes him back there every time. Liam had spent the night at a frat party and eaten almost half a pan of pot brownies; the rest of the night was spent curled up and stoned out of his mind in Brett's bathroom, only being coaxed out by noodles, of all things.

They'd fucked the next morning, with Liam finally able to tell Brett apart from the floor lamp and some coordination returned to his limbs. They'd fucked once and then again and Brett distinctly remembers never having met such a bossy bottom.

The fucking was never weird. Liam never flipped out and had a heterosexual panic; by the time he'd encountered Brett, he was four gay hookups deep and firmly of the belief that he would never again see a girl naked. They never even really talked about being together; they just were. Fell together, even, like puzzle pieces clicking neatly and seamlessly into place.

But they aren't one person. For the longest time Brett felt as though they were, even though Liam's got a plethora of bad-decision tattoos and scars from misadventures when he was younger and three prescriptions to medication for mental illness ( _lithium, risperdal, anxiolytics_ ) , and Brett's, well, boring. No tattoos or scars and no prescriptions, at least not until recently, and he's always been under the thumb of other people's expectations. That's why he's an accountant and Liam's a carpenter with a chip on his shoulder and a new story every other night; Liam said _fuck it, my life is mine_ ; Brett went the other way, more of a _I only live once, so I can't mess it up._

Not one person. It's never been more apparent; it was easy to pretend, until the outbreak; until the outbreak, they went about their little existences and lived their small life in their small apartment and went out on the odd day off they shared; they always planned to go to the beach, but they never did, and now Liam's too sick or drugged and Brett... can't.

~*~

He finds Liam in the dorm room, surrounded by broken glass shards and dripping blood all over the ground. And he's scared as hell, because he's never seen Liam look angry like that before.

"My dad," Liam spits before Brett can get any closer. "That fucking prick."

He's never heard about Liam's dad. His mom, a lot, and his stepfather, but not his dad.

"What's...?"

"He got out." Liam's still pacing and Brett's not sure how to stop him. "He just - God!" 

Brett doesn't have time to stop him; Liam's on the lacrosse team because he's fucking fast, faster than any of them, and he's just lunging forward when Liam punches what's left of the mirror and sends it crashing to the ground.

It's three in the morning before anyone in the ER will see them. Brett sits with Liam's hand cradled on his lap, wrapped in a bloody towel, watching Liam rub a red mark into his forehead and pretend he's not crying. It's horrible. Brett doesn't wanna love anyone if it feels like this.

Love. He's never thought about it before, not with Liam, but here he is - he's sitting in the ER, listening to some poor kid puke their guts out and the angry mutterings of people who believe they're worse off than anyone else, and it's three in the morning, and Liam's bleeding on him, and he's not even tempted to go. He doesn't want to be anywhere else unless that anywhere else includes Liam, hopefully with a few stitches in his hand and something else to soothe his mind.

He sits while Liam gets the glass pulled out of his hand, watches the stitches go in, and is there to escort a groggy, exhausted Liam back out to his hunk-of-shit Corolla and drive them home. 

Liam drinks a glass of water in Brett's bed and overestimates his mouthful; water runs down the sides of his mouth, and Brett will remember this; remember Liam's arm shaking as it props him up, remember the swoop of his eyelashes against his cheeks, the drawn, unhappy expression on his face; the sheer un-Liamness of his appearance.

Brett mops the water up (Liam lets him; lets Brett wipe his face gently and maybe he even leans into it, a little) and flicks off the lamp before crawling into bed with Liam and rolling onto his back.

Liam's voice cuts the darkness. "I wish he was dead."

"You don't mean..."

"I do. When I was thirteen I smashed him over the back of the head with a chair. An inch to the left, they said, and he would've been dead." He snorts mirthlessly. "Only thing that got me was three broken ribs, two black eyes, and a shiny new diagnosis to flaunt at the therapist's office."

"You aren't him," Brett says, and Liam's body goes still. "You aren't. You're better than that."

"How the fuck would you know?"

"Because I'm lying right next to you and you're angry but you haven't hurt me. And that makes you different. Better." 

He knows Liam well enough to spare his dignity; when the tears come, and Liam sniffles, and maybe whimpers a few times, Brett does nothing but rub his back until he falls asleep.

~*~

They aren't the same person.

Liam's the perfect donor; Brett isn't. Liam is immune to whatever the fuck is decimating the world's population; breathes it and stares it in the face and says _fuck you, you fucking prick_ , just like he would his dad. Like defiance alone is enough to keep the disease at bay.

Liam's the perfect donor, almost; young, healthy, immune to the disease, with a (minimal) history of drug use or smoking. And so he goes in and he donates, and Brett stays at home, because Brett's been tested and he's not immune.

He can work from home, and sometimes, when Liam doesn't need as much care, he does. But Liam can't; the donations and treatments leave him weak and he can't make dinner, let alone haul around hundreds of pounds of timber and tools. They pay him, though, the clinic; they pay him pretty handsomely. They're better off now, with only one of them working part time, than they were when they both had full time jobs.

Liam's next procedure is two days later; when he comes back, for once, he's not as sick, or even that hurt. He gives Brett a wan smile and says, "Make love to me," in such a disgustingly sappy voice Brett has to laugh as he leads him to bed.

Sometimes, the old Liam shines through. When he's not drugged, when he's not in pain. The old Liam wants Brett inside him and Brett's staring into his face as he obliges and pushes in and watches muscles unwind and relax, shifting under old-new scars, and Liam whispers, "Yeah. Missed you."

Brett leans down, grips Liam's hair, tilts his head to the side. "I want you to stop," he whispers, beginning to rock and thinking that maybe, just maybe, he can make Liam feel good enough to agree.

"I can't," Liam gasps. "You know that."

"I want you safe, Liam," Brett murmurs into his neck. "I want you around for a really long time."

"I will be," Liam says, but his new bandage - hip, today - has opened, and there's a trickle of blood leaking down and onto the sheets, and Brett can smell bleach.

~*~

Brett remembers the night Liam broke his fist open on the mirror because he thought he would never have to see Liam like that again.

Turns out, Liam broke more than just his fist; once it's over, and the dust has settled and left Liam bleary and hollow-eyed - the kind of expression that comes from feeling too much in too short a period of time - the dam breaks. The dam breaks and instead of water Brett gets a cascade of emotion from Liam; stories about his dad, about all his broken bones and scars and still-bleeding wounds, the ones that are inside. 

Liam's good at hiding pain. Really good at it. A day later he's cavorting around the lacrosse field like the most well-adjusted person in the world, and if Brett hadn't witnessed the previous twenty four hours with his own eyes, he never would have believed that Liam's capable of such pretense. The act - if that's what it is; maybe this is what Liam's like when he isn't emotionally distressed - is so refined, so authentic, that it makes it hard to believe he ever experienced emotional turmoil.

Once it's over, Brett feels like he can breathe a little, because when Liam has hard days it's suddenly obvious to him, and he tells Brett about his medications and what they're for and even expresses how self-conscious it makes him feel to be reliant on them. Self-conscious, he says, and weak, because his brain doesn't work the way everyone else's does.

"Your brain works exactly how everyone else's does," Brett says. "It needs those chemicals to function. You just get them somewhere else."

That's when their relationship becomes more than just sex.

~*~

The thing with Liam being good at hiding pain is this: Brett never really knows how much he's actually in.

Liam doesn't like being groggy and Brett suspects that really, he lies about his pain levels so that he doesn't have to take as much medication for it. So that he can actually be awake and alert, like he'll be missing something if he sleeps.

He'll tell Brett when he's bleeding, when he's sick, when he's tired; he'll let him know if his temperature suddenly spikes or he feels faint. But he won't tell Brett when he's hurting.

It took Brett the longest time to accept. _Liam won't tell you when he's in pain. Liam will probably never be totally honest with you about what happens at the clinic. Liam thinks you're better off not knowing, so he doesn't think lying to you is wrong._

The thing about hiding pain is this: Brett can't. He wears his wounds like badges and Liam patches them over every time he smiles or comes home less hurt than Brett was expecting, heals them with mugs of green tea that he himself refuses to drink. Liam's so much better at pain than Brett is.

He's had more experience.

~*~

Brett remembers where he was when the pandemic hit the way his parents remember where they were when the news of 9/11 broke.

People had been sick for a while; a lot of people had died, but a lot of people died of swine flu, of ebola, of other such epidemic style diseases. People were sick, and they were dying, and Brett felt bad for them, but he also believed, somewhere, that things would work out. The way swine flu and ebola worked out eventually.

He's in his office and it's two-thirty-one in the afternoon, and he's just opened his lunch to find Liam's left him a little cartoon inside - a chicken and a pig jousting over two slices of bread, because Liam's sense of humour is warped beyond what's recognisably funny - and the news switches over to an emergency alert.

Suddenly, the world changes. Brett's sitting and breathing the recycled air of his office and the news anchor is warning that the CDC are unable to stop the disease from spreading; that everyone should go home and stay home until there was more information. Brett's sitting in recycled air, staring at the news bulletin and holding a probably-chicken sandwich in his hands, and he's thinking of Liam, who's outside, under the sun, breathing in the same air that thousands of people have breathed that day.

He's on the way out the door when Liam finally answers the phone. "Yo," he says, and he sounds fond, a little amused. "Look, we said we were gonna stop doin' this - I know you get a break, but I don't, and-"

"You have to come home," Brett interrupts.

There's a pause. "Huh? Come home? It's only two thirty-"

"Doesn't matter. Liam, the disease is spreading. The CDC can't stop it. You need to come home, baby, okay?"

"How will that help though?" Liam asks, sounding worried. "If-"

"Liam, it doesn't matter," Brett says, and he sounds sort of like he's begging. Maybe he is, a little. "Just come home, okay? Don't stop anywhere on the way."

"We're out of milk," Liam says, and he sounds distant.

"Come home," Brett begs. "Come straight home."

~*~

He wakes to find the bathroom tap running.

He slides out of bed without really giving it much thought, pads over, and looks inside. Liam's sitting on the ground, blinking at him blearily.

"Hey, Li," Brett murmurs, sinking onto the floor next to him. "What's going on?"

Liam tilts his head back, and Brett sees tear tracks on his cheeks. "The seventh human trial failed," he says quietly. "And more donors are dead."

The news is slow to hit Brett, like his brain has absorbed all the bad news it possibly can and has a mental block on consuming more of it. "Failed," he repeats dumbly.

"Every test subject failed to respond," Liam mumbles into his knees. "The virus is too fast. It's too smart. It just keeps on fucking - mutating, like - like something out of Resident Evil or something. How the fuck are we supposed to beat this?"

"Maybe we aren't," Brett says.

"I keep going because they keep saying it's helping," Liam says, and his voice breaks. "I go 'cause they tell me my samples help, that my donations mean something, but I don't think they do. But I can't stop. If I stop and, and I'm not doing anything, I-"

"It's not your job to save the world," Brett whispers, and he wants so badly to encourage this train of thought - this is the closest Liam's ever been to giving it up, giving it away, and letting it be someone else's problem. "Liam, you can't-"

"It's everyone's job," Liam rebukes him, not unkindly. "Everyone who can has to pitch in."

"I don't care about everyone," Brett mumbles, moving closer and wrapping his arms around Liam and wishing he couldn't feel the peaks of his collarbones. "I care about you." 

Liam's fight is out there. Big scenes; scenes of death and carnage and destruction, all brought on by one errant superbug nobody can tack down. But Brett's? Brett's fight is here; Brett's fight lies in the smell of bleach and bloodstains at five in the morning; in drug cocktails no healthy person should need or be taking; Brett's fight is measured by the hours he spends trying to convince Liam to stay.

Scenes from a war they're both losing.

~*~

"I'm not immune," Brett says softly, putting the results of his test down.

Liam's sitting across from him at their breakfast bar, wearing a wife beater and boxers, his hair soft and clean, a half-eaten bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios in front of him.

"Liam?" Brett prompts, looking for reassurance. "I... I'm not immune. I don't... what's wrong?"

Liam finally looks up at him, then slides his piece of paper across the table to Brett. Brett takes it hesitantly, like the letter itself may carry the disease on it. But these were vacuum sealed, fast-tracked priority; they needed to know, as soon as it was possible.

He looks down at Liam's paper. At the breakdown of his genetic makeup; at everything that makes Liam who he is, on the outside.

And then, at the bottom, in bold lettering, there it is.

**Status: Immune**

He's never felt relief so crushing right after a devastating blow; he's up out of his chair and hugging Liam and never, ever, has he been so pathetically grateful to have something bad happen to him, because it's not happening to Liam.

"Thank God," he whispers, stroking Liam's hair. "Jesus Christ, thank God."

"What about you?" Liam whispers, and Brett realises he's crying.

"It doesn't matter." He takes Liam's face in his hands and kisses him softly. "It doesn't matter if I'm immune. You are. That's what's important." He rubs his eyes. "Nothing bad is gonna happen to you," he whispers. 

~*~

He was wrong, of course.

He spends a lot of time being wrong. He's thought more than once that it may have been better for Liam if he hadn't been immune; after all, it's the immune ones who are suffering, now. For the sake of everyone else.

Everyone banded together to help. There were talks of conscription by the government; talks of forcing the immune people to donate, to help, but even as they tried to work their way around Geneva convention rules and basic human rights, over sixty percent of the immune population came forth and volunteered to donate. To help.

Governments are occasionally corrupt at the expense of their people, Brett muses, even when it's not obvious. But their people, generally, are good. He thinks privately that it's against human nature to watch people suffer and do nothing, but then, none of the immune government officials came forward to help.

Liam was amongst the first. Maybe that's why it hit him so hard. Now, he's a veteran, been doing it for a few months now, and they're taking it easier on him because they want him to last, and even though the medical science is good, there are complications. And the complications, among exhaustion, are what kill the donors in the long run.

None of the donors thought they wouldn't make it. Blind faith in the medical system and health insurance; blind faith that this could be easily solved; blind faith in everything, everything. And when it became clear that some would die, for whatever reason, and people began dropping out - well, that's when financial compensation came in.

Significant financial compensation.

It isn't why Liam's doing it. Liam's motivations aren't all that clear to Brett, still; Liam insists that it's _the right thing to do_ , but Brett can't imagine that that's enough to justify what he's going through.

Much like what he experiences during donations and how much pain he's in afterwards, though, he doesn't give details, and his motivations, to Brett, are murky and half-understood at best.

~*~

Liam's parents fostered children while he was growing up.

He's their only biological child and the household, he explains, is hardly fit for kids, what with his abusive dad and his drug-addicted mother. Having so many people under one roof - so many kids in desperate need of guidance, not freedom - has made Liam rowdy. 

Brett's sure a certain amount of his self confidence comes from this - he's mostly raised himself, fended for himself, and he's done a good job. Liam's not pandering to anyone because he's never had to and he's probably never going to. Brett can imagine Liam as the kind of guy to look death in the face and taunt it. Never answering to anyone has its pros and cons, and Liam seems to view them as more of a pro than anything.

"Did you miss having a regular home life?" Brett asks.

Liam chews a bite of his burger and watches him for a moment. "Can't miss what you never had," he says. "After Mom remarried my stepdad and straightened out though, I didn't like that."

"Why not?" Brett asks, surprised.

He shrugs. "Dunno. Like... she was a really shit parent. They both were when I was growing up and that's when I needed them to show me and tell me what to do. They didn't. She skipped most of my childhood because she was stoned and when she eventually got sober, I was thirteen and I didn't wanna listen."

"Did you ever?"

"No. I acted out a lot. I hated her for it." Liam shrugs, and this one's a little more apologetic, self-conscious. "Honestly? I still kinda do." 

"Because... it was too little, too late?"

"Exactly, dude. She was trying to tell me when to go to bed when I was seventeen. Didn't care that I slept on any available surface when I was a kid. Conveniently ignores it, in fact." Liam snorts. "She found God and now she's a fucking hypocrite."

"How so?"

"That 'love thy neighbour' shit?" Liam scoffs. "She only loves who fits her very narrow idea of righteousness and purity or whatever. That's not many people. Including me."

"Because you're gay?" Brett asks softly.

"Because of the tattoos and piercings, actually. But probably the gay thing, if she knew."

"That's fucked."

"You said it, buddy." Liam leans back and kicks his feet up on the table - exactly the way he's not supposed to - and tilts his face up to the sky, taking a deep breath in. "What about you?"

"What about me?" He plays with his fries, makes a hashtag symbol.

"Your parents. What'd they do to you?"

"What do you mean?" Brett asks, his head jerking up. Liam's watching him.

"You know," Liam says, "having fucked up parents gives you like a radar. I can tell they did something. So?"

"They didn't do anything," Brett says softly. "That's the problem. They just... didn't do anything." He shrugs. "I don't think they wanted me. Or my sister. They weren't cruel. They fed us and took us places. I just don't think they loved us very much."

Liam tilts his head. "So they ignored you?" he murmurs.

"Yeah." There's a lump in his throat. "Nothing like what you went through though."

"Hey, man." Liam holds up his hands. "Lots of different kinds of pain. My dad hit me but my mom hurt me worse, when she ignored me. Least when dad was hitting me, I knew I was there."

"Really?" Brett asks, thinking that's really fucked up.

Liam hesitates before answering. "I knew what to expect from Dad," he admits. "I never knew what I was gonna get with Mom. She was supposed to protect me."

What he's really saying: _she didn't._

~*~

Liam's worse off the next donation. Worse, almost, than he's ever been.

It's cold and grey outside, feels like winter and silence and like the whole world has been muffled with a blanket. Before all this, it would've been one of those days where Brett would have curled up in bed and listened to the world happen around him, regardless of him; it would have been synonymous with peace.

Now, it feels sinister. It's too quiet; the world is too still, too uncaring. He remembers what Liam said, about killing Mother Nature. Thinks he was probably right in some way.

The door clicks open, and Brett whips around; it's barely past eleven and Liam's usually not home until well after one, but there he is - standing in the doorway, bundled into a coat that's hanging off one shoulder, his arm braced across his stomach, a devastated expression on his face.

"Liam?" Brett asks.

"I'm gonna puke," Liam chokes, and then he's running - running - for the bathroom. Brett hasn't seen him run in such a long time that the speed of the movement downright shocks him, to the point where it takes his brain a moment to catch up and get him moving.

He doesn't know what to do; Liam's already hurling when he gets into the bathroom, and Brett decides that the safest course of action is to wait until the first round is over, then begins to ease Liam's coat off his shoulders carefully.

"Easy," he murmurs when Liam twitches. "It's okay. It's just me..."

Liam shudders and moans and turns around, buries his face in Brett's neck and stays there, clinging to him desperately, for a long time. Liam's only ever done this maybe once or twice. It scares Brett every time, to have Liam hold him like he's drowning. 

"Liam, what's happening?" he whispers. "What's going on?"

Liam pulls away from him and stares up at him blearily. "They're conscripting people," he rasps.

The floor opens up beneath him and Brett falls; almost forty percent of the immune population refused to donate. "They can't - what?"

"There aren't enough donors," Liam says, rubbing his eyes and smearing tears across his face. "So they're gonna be conscripting all the immune people. There's no choice now, Brett. We all have to donate."

"They can't - people won't agree to this!"

Liam's face changes; bitterness seeps into his expression. "There are more of you than there are of me," he mutters. "There are more people who want to live than there are willing to die. It'll go through."

It's the first time Liam's ever drawn a line in the sand between them, a clear division in their roles - immune, and not. 

"Can I have some water?" Liam asks tiredly.

~*~

Liam's shirt is soaked through with blood. In his haste to get home, he's torn his stitches and bandages, and he lies on the couch, exhausted, as Brett patches him up again.

Once he's got a clean bandage on Liam's shoulder and has a blanket over him - Liam's still shivering, faintly, like he can hardly muster the energy - he turns to the t-shirt and stares at it.

The shoulder and arm are bloody. It's not a particularly great shirt - Liam doesn't wear good clothes to donations - but in that moment, it seems like the most important thing in the world that he save it, somehow. Make it wearable and whole again, back to the way it was before.

He swallows as he reaches for the bleach. It's already stinging his nose and hands, phantom pains he's experienced enough for his body to store as a physical memory.

"Just fucking toss it."

He turns. Liam's watching him tiredly. He looks sick. Really, honest-to-God sick, like a cancer patient, or someone with a chronic illness.

"Toss it," he repeats when Brett doesn't answer him. "It's not worth it, dude. Just get rid of it. I've got like fifty fucking more."

Brett stands there, staring, feeling like his brain is mired in fog. His brain can't compute the idea of throwing the shirt out; it's Liam, part of Liam, and bleaching everything and cleaning, always cleaning, is the one thing he can do while Liam's out donating, because that line in the sand has always existed and Brett can't go outside. 

Liam sits up, wincing. "Toss it," he repeats, a third time.

"I really miss the sun," Brett says, and Liam blinks, opens his mouth, then closes it. "And the smell of rain. Spring. I miss seeing bees and smelling pollen. And waking up before you and going to get coffee at the Starbucks on fifteenth street so you wouldn't be so shitty in the morning. And going to the grocery store at three in the morning with you because you needed fucking cookies. I miss all of it. It wasn't much but it was ours and it wasn't me or you, it was us. Just us."

Liam's up now, walking towards him, looking a little wobbly on his feet but no less sure for it. He takes Brett by the hand, leads him to the bed, and pushes him down - then climbs on top of him, wincing and putting all his weight on his good arm. The bandage looks a little pink in the middle already, and Brett knows he'll be bleaching the sheets tomorrow.

"I'm going to make sure you can go outside again," Liam says softly, sincerely. "Those things were mine too, you know? And I want them back. For both of us. And I'm gonna make sure you don't forget what rain smells like or how to order my coffee or what kind of cookies I like, because I'm gonna make sure you get to go outside again."

"How?" Brett asks.

"Why do you think I volunteered?" Liam asks. "Be honest."

"Because it's the right thing to do," Brett answers, confused. 

"I'm not that good," Liam replies softly. "I'm not. I don't care about other people enough to risk my life like that." For a long moment, he's quiet, and his eyes drift over Brett's face like search beams, looking for something. "But you aren't people, Brett," he says quietly. "Wouldn't do it for people. But I'd do it for you."

"For me?" Brett's voice breaks. "But why?"

"Because I love you," Liam says, "and I want you to live more than I want to live myself. Because being okay means nothing to me if you aren't as well."

"I don't want you to die," Brett croaks.

"I don't want you to die. And at the moment, you're in more immediate danger than I am. So shut up and let me do what I can to save your life."

Liam's lying between his legs, and he's fiercely warm and heavy and alive. When he touches his forehead to Brett's, he can feel it; a connection that extends back to Liam and touches his soul and says, _here I am. Right where I've always been._ And Brett forgot somehow - forgot that Liam's resilient if nothing else, hard as hell and willing to fight for what he wants. 

"Things are hard right now," Liam says. "But they won't always be hard. One day we're gonna wake up and it's gonna be light out, and we'll go do the things we've always done, and it'll be us. It'll just be us."

"What if something happens to you?"

"It won't," Liam says confidently.

"How do you know?"

"I'm not like anyone else. I'm not going to die."

"Ever?"

"Ever. I'm never going to die."


	2. Concomitant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii i'm back and a little drunk on red wine so sorry re/typos lmao
> 
> thanks so much for the support guys! i hope you enjoy this part too ^_^

**Concomitant: occurring or existing concurrently**

~*~

Brett dreams again that night.

They're lying on a hill near the lacrosse field and Liam's head is tossed back, and he's laughing, laughing, his eyes almost slits with mirth, his teeth glittering in the sunlight, and he sounds like home. Like everything Brett ever wanted out of life.

He doesn't even know what he said that was so funny. He doesn't care. Watching Liam makes him breathless in the worst way, because he knows he's dreaming. That this is a memory, or a close approximation of one, and that Liam isn't like this, not anymore. That Liam will likely never be like this again.

"Fuck," Liam wheezes, rolling onto his stomach and grinning at Brett. "Look. You made me cry, you prick."

And he's right. There are tears of mirth running down the sides of his face, and he's breathtakingly beautiful, and all Brett wants in that moment is to hit pause, to stop everything, to maybe even rewind and go back to the start and never meet him. Never fall in love with him, never get to know him, never let him in.

In that moment, suspended in a memory and lying on the grass outside, watching Liam breathe and live and not worry or hurt beside him, Brett realises he always has been made of light. The only problem was the shadow that followed him - Brett, not immune. The human population, not immune. 

Liam, loving him enough to sacrifice everything on a longshot that it would keep him safe.

~*~

"If I'd just left you alone, this wouldn't have happened," Brett says.

Liam blinks at him. "Wha?" he asks thickly, around a mouthful of bacon.

"If we hadn't met, you wouldn't be going to the fucking clinic and making donations and coming back half-dead every other day," Brett says, and he's so frustrated and angry with himself and their situation and _Liam_ , for constantly putting himself on the line, that he sweeps his plate and glass and cutlery off the table and watches it shatter loudly on the floorboards.

"Brett!" Liam's leaping out of his seat, looking alarmed. "Jesus! What the fuck did you do that for?"

"Stop going!" Brett shouts, and Liam takes a startled step back from him. "I'm fucking serious this time! Stop going! They're going to bleed you dry and it'll all be for nothing! I'm still gonna be here and I'm still gonna be a walking timebomb and you'll have wasted your life for _nothing_!"

There's a long pause. Brett's never yelled at him before. He's never felt so angry in his life - so angry that Liam keeps going out to donate and Brett can't even fucking follow him for support, can't be there when he wakes up, can't help him home. Can't do anything other than wait and hope and bleach the blood out of their sheets and Liam's clothes.

"I can't," Liam says, voice small.

"Yes you can!" Brett bellows, and Liam's glass follows along with the rest of the shattered china on the floor.

"Okay," Liam snaps, and he's squaring up to Brett now, realising that the only way to win this is to be the more stubborn of the two. "Let me rephrase that in a way you'll fucking understand. I _won't_."

"I hate you," Brett chokes.

"That's fine," Liam says easily. "Go ahead. Won't stop me from doing shit." 

"You have to," Brett tries.

"No," Liam replies simply, then kneels and begins to clean up the shattered glass and china with his bare hands.

Brett stands and watches helplessly. There's nothing he can do. The cold reality of it settles into him like a fever; there's nothing he can say or do that will stop Liam from going out and making donations. 

"Let me do that," he says, kneeling and suddenly feeling embarrassed and ashamed of himself.

"Why?" Liam mutters tensely.

"Because you do enough," Brett snaps, and Liam stands and saunters over to the couch, drops onto it, and pulls on the headphones that come with the PlayStation 4, effectively shutting him out.

This isn't what their life is supposed to look like.

~*~

Brett, as stupid as it may sound, actually had a plan; a life trajectory that, surprisingly, was going pretty well until the outbreak hit them.

It went a little like this: fall in love, sometime before he left college. Move in with partner, age twenty two. Secure a job in a good accounting firm, also age twenty two. Propose to said partner, age twenty six - leaving room for setbacks. 

Liam's three years younger than Brett. When Brett had hit twenty two and got a job at a good accounting firm like he wanted, Liam was still meandering his way through college, seeming disinterested with what he was doing and unhappy in the dorms.

So when Brett got a lease on a fairly spacious studio apartment, in the inner city and close to work, he printed Liam a key and Liam started to stay over. Liam started to stay over more and more, and Brett wanted him to go home less and less, and eventually, sometime just after Liam's nineteenth birthday, it became permanent, and Liam's things migrated into his drawers, and Brett said, "We'll work out the money stuff later".

Liam moved in, dropped out of college, and, the very next week, got himself a carpentry apprenticeship, where he was happier than Brett had ever seen him. After a year - of being basically dirt poor and looking anxious whenever it was time to pay rent, needlessly, because Brett earned more than enough to cover him - he finally graduated into a full job, not an apprenticeship.

Their life continued like that for a year and a half, almost, until Liam was almost twenty two and Brett verging on twenty five, and they were happy. Whole nights spent playing whatever game was new out, eating Chinese food, or forcing each other to go on late night runs (they always set the alarm with the intention of going early in the morning together; they never followed through), and tumbling into bed together for sleep or sex or whatever else they felt like doing.

Liam moved out of simple carpentry into, well, everything - a master of all trades. Anything made of wood or steel, anything that has nuts, bolts, screws, or otherwise removable parts - Liam loves all of it, and Brett suspects that if they'd had a garage, it would be full of work tools and he'd never see Liam, who's happiest when he has something to do, create, or fix. 

Their life was meant to be simple and long and happy. Not this weird inverse where they're miserable and scared and confused - and neither of them have a long life expectancy, at this rate.

~*~

Liam folds himself down into bed next to Brett sometime just past two in the morning.

Brett's relieved. A late night means Liam has no intention of donating tomorrow morning, and that's good.

"Fuck," Liam hisses.

Brett stares up at the ceiling. "Shoulder?"

"You aren't asleep." It isn't a question; Liam rubs his face. "Yeah. Shoulder. And hip, and every other spot they put a goddamn drill in me."

There's a pause. Brett grabs an extra pillow, tucks it carefully beneath Liam's hurting shoulder. For a while, they're still.

"You aren't going to stop," Brett murmurs.

"No," Liam whispers back. "I'm sorry. I can't."

Brett closes his eyes against the tears. He doesn't want to cry; he spends so much time doing it, and Liam, Liam never sheds a tear, never voices how badly he's hurting, never complains. Just gets up and goes and does whatever it is he does and comes home, for Brett.

"Okay," Brett says. 

"What? Really?"

"Yeah. But you have to start being honest with me."

"About what?"

"Everything. What they do there. How you're feeling. If I'm gonna stop nagging you not to go, you at least have to tell me what's happening so I can try to help you."  
"If I'm honest, you'll barricade me in here and never let me out."

"Like I can stop you," Brett says bitterly, and that hangs there, for a moment - he really can't stop Liam. He's not even really dumb enough to think that he can, because if their situation was reversed - if Liam were vulnerable to disease, and Brett was the one donating - he knows that he wouldn't stop either.

"Okay," Liam says into the darkness.

~*~

Brett's got lots of little wishes that he wants to tell Liam about, but he knows Liam - despite loving Brett to the ends of the earth and back - has a terrible memory. So he's compiled them all into three.

1\. To live.  
2\. For Liam to stop donating.  
3\. To spend more time with him.

He gets his wish today. Liam enters their apartment at some time just past eleven, not even bothering to shrug out of his coat as he makes a beeline for the bed.

"Liam?" Brett asks softly, abandoning the sliced mushrooms on the counter to follow him. 

Liam flops down, curls into a ball, and mumbles, "I'm sorry I'm home late." His hair fans out across the pillow, and the weak sunlight turns the dark brown strands into something warmer and lighter.

"What d'you mean? It's eleven." Brett settles on the bed behind him. "You're shivering."

"M'fine," Liam mumbles blearily. "M'just cold."

"Okay." Brett starts to ease Liam out of his coat. "Get this off. I'll turn the electric blanket on. Make you tea."

Liam cracks an eye open, but he cooperates with Brett's gentle hands, pulling at the sleeves of his coat. "Coffee."

"Tea," Brett says firmly, and Liam mutters something about holistic bullshit and fake medicine, but he lies down and lets Brett cover him in a pile of blankets, and when Brett brings him tea, he drinks it. 

Tea isn't something that makes Liam feel particularly better, and Brett has a feeling that Liam only drinks it because it helps Brett - it makes him feel better, to know he helped in some infinitesimal way.

~*~

He dreams of broken china and glass, of his own voice shouting, of Liam shrinking back from him in fear. Pinpricks of blood have appeared on his fingertips from where he's been cleaning up the mess - Brett's mess, Brett's temper.

When he wakes, he's sweating. Crying. Liam's shaking his shoulder, looking bewildered and a little scared. 

"Brett?" he asks. "Jesus, what's wrong?"

"I feel bad about yelling at you," Brett whispers.

"What?" Liam's brow creases. "I - when?"

"Before. Two days ago. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Oh. Shit." Liam looks blank. "Hey. It didn't matter that much. You were pissed. I get it."

Liam's casual pass on his behaviour somehow makes him feel worse. "It's not okay," he mumbles, pressing his hands against his eyes in distress. "It really isn't. Bad enough what your parents did to you, and now-"

"You're nothing like my parents," Liam says quietly. "Yeah? You were frustrated. I understand. You weren't trying to hurt me or scare me."

"But I did. Scare you."

"A little. Yeah. Never seen you that mad before." Liam turns to look out the window - the blinds are open, and there's streetlight seeping into their apartment, light bouncing off the modern fixtures. Liam's always looked a little strange in the setting - the sleekness of the high-rise directly contradicting Liam's rough, tanned, usually dirty visage.

It's never been invasive, though. He's never seemed like he doesn't belong. If anything, his strangeness reads like art to Brett, who can still hardly believe that someone like Liam exists. He never stood a fucking chance; from the moment he met Liam, it was like he woke up. Like he's been asleep, before then, and Liam had flipped a switch and shown him what life could be like.

"You warned me," he says, and his voice cracks as he stares up at Liam's face.

Liam frowns again. "Huh?"

Brett shakes his head, pulls Liam down into a hug, and holds him. Liam goes easily, not flinching from pain, not seeming resistant in the slightest, even though Brett can feel his confusion.

"I'm sorry," Brett whispers thickly.

Liam's hand touches his neck, hesitantly, then cards through his hair. "I... it's fine."

"It's not-"

"Oh, shut the fuck up. Okay, it's not. Is that what you wanna hear? Maybe it isn't okay to yell. Sure. But I know you didn't mean anything by it. My dad venting his shit by punching me in the face, or kickin' my ribs till I couldn't breathe? That's a little different."

Brett nods mindlessly into Liam's shoulder. "Yeah," he whispers.

"Yeah," Liam repeats. "Alright. You're always makin' me drink tea when I feel like shit - now it's your turn."

~*~

The week Liam's dad is released from jail is probably one of the worst, for Brett, on record.

He remembers it well. It's a Wednesday. It's the dead of winter and freezing out, like it might snow. They're supposed to go to class, but Liam's sitting despondently on his dorm bed and he isn't moving.

"C'mon," Brett says. He sits down next to Liam hesitantly, tucks himself close. "We gotta go."

Liam rests his head on Brett's shoulder, and for a moment, it's pretty quiet. Brett doesn't do anything, just sits and lets Liam lean on him.

"I can't," Liam murmurs.

"Liam-"

"I can't, okay? Not today." He shakes his head like he's trying to clear it and rubs his eyes. "Feel like I'm twenty feet underwater," he mumbles shakily. "I dunno how - Christ, Brett, he beat the shit out of me. He nearly killed me more than once. How the fuck could they let him out?"

Brett swallows. He doesn't know. He looked Liam's dad up, before, saw the conviction in stark, black-and-white newspaper print - _"Dunbar abused his son, eleven, and several of the foster children under his care... child abuse like nothing this county has ever seen..."_ \- and had known that the conviction was more than what most victims get. And it still isn't enough. Because they're letting him out to do it again.

"I'm sorry," he says instead, because he doesn't know what else to say. There's nothing that will cover what he's feeling, or how Liam's feeling. The empty apology - one that should come from Liam's father, not him - is all he has to offer.

Liam wipes his eyes. Gives a wonky, trembling smile. "You know what's fuckin' shit?"

"What?" Brett wonders, even as he thinks, _everything. All of it._

"I got off lightly." Liam snorts wetly, shakes his head, and doesn't shrug Brett off when Brett wraps an arm around him. "The foster kids? God, Brett. What he did to them..."

"Don't think about that," Brett says, because he can see Liam slipping away from him. "Don't, okay? Let's, uh..."

He looks around the room wildly. Liam's quiet by his side.

"How 'bout we go to Starbucks?" Brett suggests frantically.

Liam squints at him. "Starbucks?"

"Yeah. I'll buy you something. How about one of those snowman cookies you like so much?"

Liam sniffs and stands up, grabs his coat and keys and wallet. "Good thing I don't care 'bout people thinking I'm gay," he sniffles.

Brett laughs, breathlessly, relieved. "Cookies don't have gender values," he says, because this is familiar to him. "Or represent your sexuality. Unless they're rainbow and bought at Pride."

Liam smiles wanly. "Thanks," he says.

"For what?"

"I dunno. Just being you I guess."

~*~

The only good thing to come from this outbreak is this: Liam's dad contracted the disease and died, having not changed an inch and cursing everyone who tried to help him to the grave.

Brett had never wished death on someone before Liam's dad. Before Liam had told Brett exactly what had happened to the other kids in his care. But he wasn't sad to see the guy go - in fact, he felt satisfied. Sickly satisfied, the kind of feeling that comes from violating your own morals.

"How's Liam doing?"

He's on the phone with his mom. She sounds bored, like she couldn't care less, but she's sounded that way her entire life. She's only marginally more enthusiastic about Lori, and only when Lori is jumping through all her hoops.

"He's fine, Mom." Brett turns; Liam's asleep on the couch, covered in the fluffy blanket and pale. He donated, yesterday, and he hasn't recovered his strength yet. "He's hanging in there."

"You should stop him."

Brett's temper flares - her flat, disinterested tone, like she's suggesting something novel, grates him. "Oh, thanks. Great advice. What, you think I haven't tried that already?"

"You probably haven't been firm enough with him." Blunt. Dismissive. "He's got stronger character than you."

" _Firm enough_ with him? He isn't a golden retriever! And are you forgetting the part where I can't exactly chase him onto the street?" Brett hisses into the receiver. "Mom, if this is your idea of being supportive you can shove it. I'm doing what I can and so is he. What the fuck have you done? Cowered while people like him took the hits for you?"

There's a brief silence. "I didn't see the need to donate."

"Oh, fuck off." With that, Brett ends the call and throws his phone onto the table, running his hands through his hair.

"You shouldn't talk to her."

He looks at Liam. His eyes are open, a little red. 

"Yeah," Brett sighs, coming to sit near Liam's feet.

"Seriously." Liam adjusts sleepily. "She makes you fuckin' crazy. Can't be good for your blood pressure." 

"Since when do you worry about my blood pressure?"

"Someone has to." Liam looks around. "What time is it?"

"About two. You haven't been asleep for long."

Liam sighs, rubs his left eye. There's creases in his face from the pillow. "Yeah," he replies quietly. "Doesn't feel like it."

Brett watches him. Liam looks back at him for a moment, then drops his eyes.

"What?" Brett asks.

"I'm tired, man." Liam's voice breaks. "I'm - I'm really fucking tired."

Brett stares, opens his mouth to say something. He's not sure what until he hears himself whisper, "Of - what?"

Liam looks back up at him. He seems to have himself under control again, but his eyes are still glittering, and his voice is rough when he answers, "Of being in pain. Being sick. There's nothing even fucking wrong with me, you know? It's what they're doing to me. I - I don't think they care if we die, man."

"No, they - they do, they must-"

"If it took every single one of us dying to make a cure for everyone else, they'd do it. You know they would. There are more people who can get sick and are sick than people who are immune."

Brett runs a hand through his hair, puts his other on Liam's neck. Liam sighs - a quiet, shaken, defeated noise - and turns his face towards Brett's hand.

"You know some people committed suicide?" he asks softly. "Rather than donate? The - the donation rooms - they used to be, you know, not nice or anything, but at least calm. We were volunteers, you know? And even if we got sick or it hurt, more than usual anyway, we knew the docs were doing their best. And the nurses. And that they didn't wanna be there anymore than we did."

"Donation rooms?" Brett asks.

"Yeah." Liam closes his eyes. "There's three people per room. Kinda like a regular hospital ward, only a little smaller I guess. And there's these big purple curtains. Purple 'cause black is morbid and you can see through the white ones, kinda, if you're looking hard enough."

Brett nods. His brain is registering everything as if he's not really the one hearing it.

"Used to be okay. Some people'd be in pain. I've been the one making noise more than once. But now it's - fuck, Brett. You know they drag people in? And they beg, man. They beg the docs to let 'em go. I volunteered so this shit didn't fucking happen. Now it's happening anyway. It was all for nothing."

"What do they do to you, Liam?" Brett asks.

Liam looks startled for a moment, and then reluctant. "That isn't gonna help you. Knowing."

"Whatever my brain can conjure up is worse, I think."

Liam takes a deep breath and starts to sit up, wincing. Brett knows better than to push him down - that's never worked - so instead he levers Liam upright gently and watches as Liam pulls up his shirt, revealing the fresh bandage over his hip.

"This?" Liam asks. "I used to sleep for this. They'd knock me out. I don't now. I get dosed up on happy gas and they use some kind of numbing shit-"

_Lidocaine, general anaesthetic, barbiturates,_ Brett's mind supplies. Words Liam doesn't know.

"-And they cut me open, a little. Enough to see what they're doing. And then they take this needle." He holds up his hands, and they're shaking, almost a foot apart. "This big. They stick it right down into my bone - my hip, or my shoulder, sometimes even my back - and they take out my bone marrow."

Brett's sure he's gone white, because he feels cold all over, like he's just brushed shoulders with death. "Bone marrow?"

"Yeah." Liam lets his shirt drop. "Bone marrow. Sometimes tissue samples. Sometimes just straight blood. The bone marrow is the worst though. God, dude, it makes you so weak. Breathing makes me tired sometimes."

"They found something in your bone marrow?" Brett asks blankly.

"Guess so," Liam says tiredly. "They said my samples help. That they're some of the best around this area. Hope so."

"That's why you don't go every day."

"Bingo." Liam rubs his face. "Lately?" he confesses. "Lately it's just 'cause I can't stand the crying. Or the screaming, sometimes. We're scared too, you know?"

Brett leans over and holds him. Tight, tighter than what must be comfortable for Liam's aching body, at least. But Liam doesn't complain - just reaches up to hold Brett back, and Brett's not sure if it's Liam shaking or him.

"Stop going," he whispers. "I know I said I wouldn't ask but-"

"I would if I could," Liam replies quietly. "But I don't think I have a choice now."

"You've done your time," Brett moans helplessly.

"Yeah? Tell that to the government."

~*~

"They're looking for donors."

Brett looks up. Liam's looking at him from the breakfast counter, eyes filled with trepidation. He knows Brett won't like this. And he's fucking right.

"No," Brett says.

"Brett..."

"No! You aren't a guinea pig!"

"What do you think they're gonna do if they don't get volunteers?" Liam demands, shoving the newspaper at him. "Seriously, what do you think will happen? I'm gonna end up in there one way or the other. May as well go willingly."

"It's not willing if you're being coerced into it!" Brett grabs the newspaper and scans the bit Liam's circled. "Liam, no. No. You can't do this."

"You can't stop me," Liam says flatly. Brett recognises that tone of voice - he's heard it a lot. It's Liam's "I'm getting my way and there's nothing you can do about it" voice.

"No," he says, but Liam's eyes are saying yes.

~*~

_That was where we lost control_ , Brett thinks, staring up at the ceiling. _That was when we started losing everything._

"Brett."

He looks to the side. Liam's wincing a little, trying to sit up.

"What's wrong?" Brett's body moves before he commands it to - it's used to Liam's expressions of pain now, and his responses are finely coded into his muscle memory. "Are you-"

"Can you help me to the bathroom?" Liam's eyes have got that sad, half-lidded look that he gets when he's tired and hurting and doesn't care if Brett notices. "I think I'm bleeding again."

So Brett helps. Liam's much shorter than him, and Brett bends so Liam doesn't have to stretch, and together they make it to the bathroom. Liam leans against the counter while Brett lifts his shirt up to see the wound on his hip.

The bandage is pink. More red than pink really, and Liam's shivering a little.

Brett peels back the bandage. The wound looks red around the stitches, puffy.

"This looks infected," he says quietly.

"It feels infected." Liam sighs softly. "Phone?"

"Why?" But he hands the cordless over. 

"They set up a new hotline," Liam explains. "When the new donors came in." He's dialling a number - one he's memorised, by the looks of it. "Gimme a second."

It's barely two rings before someone picks up; Liam pauses for a moment, lets them talk, before saying, "Yeah, hi, uh - I did a donation two days ago, think I've got an infection, um-"

Pause.

"Oh. Dunbar. Liam." Pause. "Mhm. That's me. Um." He looks up, meets Brett's eyes. "Brett. August fourteenth, 2001."

Brett blinks. His birthday. But why?

"I uh, I dunno. A few hours?" Liam touches his own forehead. "Yeah. Fever. Listen, this has happened before, so-"

He stops. There's a long pause; his eyebrows begin creeping up his forehead. "You'll... that's new. Yeah." He rattles off their address, finishing with a, "Thanks, bye," before hanging up.

"What was all that about?" Brett asks hesitantly.

"They're sending a doctor to me," Liam says. "Instead of me having to go there. I didn't know they were doing that now."

"It's a good thing," Brett decides for the both of them.

"Sure." Which isn't agreement, exactly. It's more like Liam's conceding Brett's point, if anything.

"Okay." Brett sighs. "Let's get you comfy."

~*~

"What's that for?"

The doctor had arrived within half an hour. Liam's lying on the couch, watching warily as she draws a needle full of medication and squirts some into the air. His sleeve is rolled up, and she's got a tourniquet around it.

"It's an antibiotic," she says kindly. "It'll bring your fever down and help you rest."

Liam nods, watching as she swabs his arm. "Can I?" she asks, motioning to the crook of his elbow.

"Sure," Liam says quietly.

Brett watches her insert the needle and press down. Liam's face twitches, but only a little before he locks the expression down and goes blank. Stoic, in a way that's far too practiced for Brett to be comfortable with.

"Okay," she murmurs. "Now, can I have a look?"

Liam tugs his shirt up and pulls the hip of his sweats down a bit, exposing the bandage, and, when she peels it back, the wound itself. She peers at it critically, humming, pressing the edges of it a little.

"Ow," Liam snaps pointedly, jerking back from her.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I need to see how bad the infection is, okay? I know it isn't exactly pleasant-"

"You try being poked and prodded and drilled and then getting an infection and then make a judgment on how _pleasant_ it is," Liam retorts angrily.

"Liam," Brett says tiredly. "C'mon."

Liam shoots him a glare, but Brett can see concession in his gaze. "Fine," he mutters. "Sorry."

"It's alright." She doesn't even seem ruffled. "I should have warned you before I touched." She inspects it a little more closely. "Liam, I want to take the stitches out, sterilise it again, and then put new ones in. Is that okay?"

"Will that help?" Liam asks, almost distrustful.

"I think so, yes."

A pause. "Will you numb it?" he mumbles, almost as if he's embarrassed. Brett's heart hurts; Liam's embarrassed about not wanting to be in pain, and how fucked up is that?

"I'll make sure it doesn't hurt," the doctor says kindly. "That's part of my job." With that, she reaches over and pulls out another injection. "If you'd like," she says softly, "I can put you under a general anaesthetic. You'll sleep through the procedure."

Liam hesitates for a long moment, flicks his eyes up to Brett, as if he's making sure Brett's still there (where else would he be?), and then, finally, says, "Yeah. Okay." 

It only takes two minutes for the anaesthetic to grip Liam tightly and pull him down into an unnaturally still sleep; the doctor waits until she's sure he's under completely, then pulls out a numbing agent and puts it on the affected area.

"This way," she says softly, "he won't feel a thing when he wakes. I'll leave some with you. It should at least be able to take the edge off."

Brett's throat is tight, and his eyes are stinging. "Thank you."

There's a long silence as she snips through the old stitches and begins to clean out the wound. Brett watches her work for a bit, feeling woozy at the sight of Liam's skin cleaved open like a cut of meat at the butcher's, but unable to look away.

"Will the anaesthetic make him sick?" he asks, mostly for something to do.

She doesn't look at him; she's busy inspecting Liam's flesh. "No," she says quietly. "He's had this one before with no adverse reactions." Here, she turns to Brett and smiles. "I read his file before I came here."

"How long until he wakes up?"

"A few hours. The antibiotic can make people drowsy, so a little longer, maybe."

Brett nods. He's floundering. There's nothing he can do other than watch as she cleans the wound out and puts in new stitches.

"There," she murmurs, smoothing a new bandage down and covering Liam up. "He should be alright now. Groggy, maybe."

Brett nods; the doctor moves off to pack up her things, and Brett throws a blanket over Liam and slips a pillow under his head. Liam doesn't move. He's breathing long and deep, so slowly it's almost alarming. 

"Do you want a coffee?" Brett asks the doctor.

She turns to him, seeming surprised. "Sorry?"

"A coffee," he repeats. "Do you want one? That is if you don't have anywhere else to be."

"Oh, no." She shakes her head. "I'm on call for this sector of the city. Liam's got me until someone else needs me." 

"Oh." He feels a little surprised at that. "Sure. So..."

"Coffee," she finishes for him.

He makes one for her, using the machine, froth and all on the top. She's pretty, he thinks, with dark skin and brown eyes and a waterfall of ink black hair. She doesn't look like one of the faceless monsters he imagines drilling into Liam's bones.

"What did you say your name was?" he asks.

"Adi Malhi," she replies, giving him a smile. "Yours?"

"Brett." He gestures to the couch, where Liam's still blessedly unconscious. "Liam. My much braver other half."

She nods. "I'm surprised at your hospitality," she admits.

"Why's that?" He joins her, not bothering to clean the machine. He'll make Liam one when he wakes up. 

"Most of our donors and their families treat us like monsters." She smiles a little, but there's no warmth or humour there. "I suppose I don't blame them. Especially the ones that are conscripted. It's nice to meet people who don't."

"Just doing your jobs," Brett sighs. "If a government official walked in here right now, though, I'd probably turn him to pulp." He rubs his face. "Sorry," he says. "That Liam was snappy."

She shakes her head. "Don't worry," she murmurs. "I understand. He was polite compared to most of the people I see. I can't say I don't understand why they're so distrustful of us."

"Why do you do it?" Brett asks curiously. "Sounds like you're pretty jaded."

She sighs. "There are plenty of doctors who see the immune as experiment fodder," she explains quietly. "It's true that I'm jaded. I took the Hippocratic oath when I graduated to do no harm. The moral dissonance of being a doctor now..." She shakes her head. "But," she continues, "if I stay in this job, and I treat people as best as I can... then maybe I'm doing the right thing after all."

Brett stares out the window. The city glitters beneath them, lifelessly, like a Christmas display after-hours. He can see a few people in the streets... but not many. Not given that this is a capital city, on the coast.

"You ever think we're going about it the wrong way?" he asks her quietly.

"I think we're doing what we know how to do," she replies.

"Take," he responds miserably. "By force if necessary. That's why you're here, right? Because we started conscripting people? And they need a service now?"

Her face twists. "We didn't do it," she insists. "We didn't conscript people. The government-"

"We all did it," he replies. "We're all complicit in it. Nobody tried to stop it." He rubs his face, turns to look at Liam. "He donated so other people didn't have to," he mutters. "He volunteered for it. Even after he realised what it entailed he kept going back. And now we're conscripting people anyway and his sacrifice is useless."

"But not meaningless," she murmurs. "It prevented it. For a little while."

"The outcome is the same," he says. "Don't defend them. The people who did this. Not a single immune politician donated. They expected us to do it, and we did, because it was the right thing. For what? The same result. We're sentencing people to death. Not everyone survives donations. You'd know the statistic for that."

"I do." Her voice is wet.

"So don't defend them," Brett snaps. "Don't pretend what they're doing is justifiable. It isn't. If Mother Nature wants to wipe out most of the population with a superbug, maybe we should have fucking let her."

"It's against human nature," Adi says softly. "To give up. To be willing to die." 

"We're unsustainable," he answers. "There are almost eleven billion people on this godforsaken rock. That number grows every day. Ninety percent of the world starves while the top five percent in the middle has it made, stealing from the people in the middle who are well enough off to know what's happening, but powerless to stop it. Everyone's waiting for a dystopic novel scenario to come true for us, but it already has. We're living it. You know who we are, though?"

She shakes her head.

"We're the bad guys," he says, voice shaking. "And you know why? Because we don't think it's a problem. We don't think it's a problem because it doesn't affect us. We do nothing because we would risk ourselves. We feign ignorance. And that perpetuates suffering."

"We aren't all bad people, Brett," she whispers, covering his hand. "Look at Liam."

His eyes water. "Liam's different," he says. "He's good. He goes out of his way not to hurt people even if he can't help them. And look where that got him."

She nods.

"You don't get it," he says tiredly. "The absence of ill intent doesn't make you good. It just makes your ignorance less malicious."

There's a long pause.

"I should go," she says, eventually. "There are other patients who may need me. At the hospital."

"Right." He stands rubs his face. "I'm sorry. And thank you. For helping with Liam."

She smiles a little, hands him a card. "Here."

"What's this?"

"My personal number. If you two have any trouble... call me, alright? Don't go through the official channels. I'll be here."

"Thank you," he says, and means it.

"Of course." She heads for the door; he follows her.

"Dr. Malhi," he says.

She turns. "Yeah?"

He smiles, or tries to. "You're good," he says. "I wasn't..."

She smiles tremulously. "Thank you, Brett."

She leaves. Brett turns to the apartment; the sheets need bleaching again.

His gorge rises, and before he knows it, he's puking - doesn't even make it to the bin, just leans over and vomits on the hardwood floor and stares at the remains of breakfast for a moment.

Then he gets the cleaning supplies in the cupboard and gets to work.

~*~

"Yo, Brett."

He's surprised at Liam's voice on the other end of the phone. "Yeah?"

"You should come home."

He blinks, staring at the financial spreadsheet in front of him. "Uhh..."

"Seriously." And he can hear Liam smiling, now; he's having fun with something, or he's pleased with something. "Come home. Say you're sick."

He laughs. "Why?"

"Trust me! Do you trust me?"

"With my life," Brett says, smiling fondly.

"Alright. Then come home." With that, Liam hangs up; Brett stares at his phone for only another few seconds before closing the spreadsheet, letting his boss know he's "sick", and heading for the tube.

He ditched his car after he moved here. He's so close to public transport, in every direction, that he doesn't need it; every other time, he takes a taxi. The car was a piece of shit anyway, and the only thing he really misses about it is getting to fuck Liam in the backseat. Or the fact that Liam had fondly named it Old Rusty. 

Before the hour's out, he's stepping off the train and making the short walk to his apartment building. Liam's got a key, so he's hardly surprised when he sees Liam's truck in his residency space. Liam still needs his car, for driving between places.

"Li?" he calls when he comes in.

"Wait!" 

"Huh?" Brett asks, and Liam comes hurtling out from behind the screen that separates the bed from the rest of the apartment. Liam has two speeds - fast or faster. Right now, he's moving at breakneck speed, and he's got a hand over Brett's eyes.

"Liam?"

"Hi." Liam pecks his lips. "I have something to show you. Close your eyes."

"Is this where you kill me?" Brett asks, laughing, as he shuts his eyes and allows Liam to lead him up the few stairs to the bedroom area. It's a studio, and the only thing that gives the bed any privacy is a mottled glass screen.

"After," Liam says absently, and Brett laughs again. "Okay, okay... aaand, open."

Brett opens his eyes.

"Do you like it?" Liam asks nervously. 

Brett stares. His king sized mattress is now elevated off the ground by a base made from reclaimed grey wood, slatted, with built in side tables and little shelves running around the sides and at the foot. There's a clear foot of space on any side of the mattress.

"Liam, did you make this?" he asks in wonderment.

"Yeah," Liam says nervously. "Look, I promise I didn't scratch the floors, okay? But you've been bitching about a bedframe for weeks and, well, I don't really give a shit about what the bedframe looks like. I'd sleep anywhere. But I know you do so I uh, I made you this."

"Liam, this is incredible," Brett says, amazed. "Wow. It's beautiful. You did it all yourself?"

"Yep." Liam smiles. 

Brett turns and pulls him into a hug. "Thank you," he says, grinning into Liam's hair. "This is awesome. It's - well, it's pretty much exactly what I didn't know I was looking for."

"Fuckin' oath it is," Liam says cheerfully. "I know you. And I know that you like looking stylish without seeming like you put any effort into it."

Brett laughs. "Yeah. You know me." He pulls away. "Do you have to go back to work?" 

"Nope. I have the day-"

Brett tosses Liam down on the mattress and pins his wrists, and Liam's laughing and squirming and putting up a really pisspoor effort to actually get away. "What are you doing?" he laughs.

"We need to christen it," Brett says seriously.

"Okay, okay," Liam giggles. "Lemme at least get the lube."

"Where is it?" Brett asks impatiently, and he almost drags Liam back by the waist when Liam wriggles towards the left side of the bed.

"Whataaaa!" he says, producing the lube from a hidden drawer.

"Fuck," Brett laughs. "You're such a dweeb. I love you so much."

"I'm your dweeb," Liam says. "Now fuck me, I ain't getting any younger."

~*~

Brett blinks.

He's sitting with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea, and it's getting darker, and he's just come back from his memory again.

He rubs his face. Good thing Liam built the bedframe, considering he now spends most of his time actually in bed.

He looks towards the couch at just the right moment; Liam stirs, a little, and Brett gets up and goes over, kneels down in front of him and waits for him to crack his eyes open. It takes a moment, but Brett sees the recognition in them - Liam's back, suddenly, knows where he is and who he is and why.

"Hey," Brett says.

Liam licks his lips, blinks slowly. "Mm, hi."

"How're you feeling?" He watches Liam move, groggily, as if he has no real awareness of where his limbs are in relation to the rest of him.

"Sleepy." 

"You aren't in pain?"

Liam shakes his head a little.

"Okay. Good." Brett sits for a moment, watching as Liam fully regains consciousness. He knows Liam's there when his hand drifts down to his side, and he looks at Brett blearily.

"Where's the doc?"

"She had to go. You've been out almost four hours."

"Oh." Liam still looks drowsy. "Okay." He tilts his head to watch Brett for a long moment. "Hmm."

"What's up?"

"Thirsty."

"I'll get you some water."

~*~

"Christ, dude. What's that, the fourth box of tissues you've gone through?"

Brett peers up at Liam blearily from his blanket cocoon. "Don't judge me," he sniffles.

"I'm not judging you," Liam replies, grinning. "I'm mocking you."

"You're the worst boyfriend ever."

"I did warn you," Liam says idly, but he brings Brett a bowl of soup and crawls into bed next to him, apparently content with listening to Brett sniffle as he plays Call Of Duty.

"That's the worst game ever," Brett mumbles. Liam's arm shifts under his cheek.

"Say it again, I'll pour soup on your head."

Liam could be anywhere else right now - with the masses of friends he seems to have, or at lacrosse practice, or, well, doing anything other than being a pillow for a mucus-filled, feverish Brett.

But he isn't; he's hunkered down in bed as well, mashing buttons, and strangely enough, it doesn't seem like he'd rather be anywhere else. He's here, even with other people vying for his attention, and something about that makes Brett feel warm.

"What're you starin' at?" Liam asks suspiciously. 

"Your face."

"What?" Liam looks alarmed. "What about it? Have I got a zit?"

Brett smiles blearily. "You're just pretty is all."

Liam stares at him for a moment, then goes back to his game. "You're fucked in the head, man," he mumbles, but he's blushing, and Brett counts this as a victory.

~*~

Brett's memory is interspersed with moments like this; little things, inconsequential, at least in the moment. But looking back on it now, the memories are precious like gold; they had no idea what was coming, and no reason to fear the future. In fact, they looked forward to it.

Liam's resting on the couch. He's not sleeping; his brow is furrowed and he looks uneasy, like he's in the dim twilight between wakefulness and sleep, unable to go in either direction. His hip is hurting him - probably from having the wound reopened and stitched - and he hasn't moved very far.

Liam's thinner. He somehow hasn't noticed before now but it's true; he's still muscular and solid, but he's lost weight, especially around the waist area. Liam's never had ripped abs, but he's always been firm, and his arms have always been well defined.

Brett sits down on the coffee table and watches him for a moment. Liam's always been smaller than him, but Brett's always deferred to him, always let Liam introduce them to others, always let him take the lead. He's _Liam, _. His personality is so big he seems to dwarf Brett.__

__He can notice it now, though. See that Liam's chest and hips aren't quite as wide as his, that he even looks younger. Even with the tattoos and scars and pierced ears... Liam looks young. He always has. But especially now._ _

__His eyes crack open. "Why're you starin' at me?" he mumbles._ _

__"You're pretty."_ _

__Liam scoffs weakly. "Right. I feel like hell. Doubt I look better."_ _

__He's kind of right; he's pale and his hair is greasy and his lips are dry and chapped and he needs to shower. And Brett's not dumb enough to even try and pretend like all of that is beautiful, not when it's a result of Liam being some doctor's guinea pig in a desperate grab to save peoples' lives. He can't, and Liam wouldn't want him to anyway._ _

__"Well," Brett says. "I guess you had to start aging eventually."_ _

__He knows he's said the right thing when Liam laughs a little. "You need anything?" Brett asks softly. "Can you eat?"_ _

__"Not hungry," Liam replies with a sigh. "But uh - reckon I could get into bed? Couch isn't that comfy after a while."_ _

__"Sure." Brett hesitates. "How do you wanna do this?"_ _

__He doesn't carry Liam. He helps him, does ninety percent of the work sometimes, and it can take them five or ten minutes to get to the bathroom from the couch or bed, but he never carries Liam. Liam never lets him - shoves his arm away and rasps, "I got it," - and Brett, well, Brett doesn't like to try._ _

__He doesn't carry Liam because carrying him means things are as bad as they were at the start. When he wasn't sure Liam would survive another round._ _

__Liam shifts, wincing. "How 'bout we tackle sitting up first?"_ _

__It's work. Liam's still half-asleep and fighting off the anaesthetic; he's white as a sheet as Brett helps him sit, then swing his legs over to the side of the couch._ _

__"You remember that time you got drunk?" Brett asks, to fill the painful silence between them. "When you got really drunk?"_ _

__"That's happened a lot." Liam's voice is tight, ready to snap, and Brett helps him stumble to his feet. "Which time?"_ _

__"A few months after we got together," Brett says. "You were almost blackout drunk and you were puking and it was so fucking gross. I sat in the bathroom with you for hours. And when I eventually got you showered and into bed, you told me you loved me for the first time."_ _

__"I meant it." Liam's eyes are smiling, even as his mouth is thin and white with pain and exertion. "Every word."_ _

__"I know."_ _

__~*~_ _

__Liam stops puking at two in the morning._ _

__Really, that's early, and Brett counts himself lucky as he strips Liam down to nothing and bundles him into the shower. Liam gasps as the water hits his skin, leans on Brett - a sodden, miserable, drunk mass of sophomore - and looks disoriented, confused._ _

__"Alright," Brett murmurs. "Easy. It's okay."_ _

__"Water?" Liam asks intelligently._ _

__"Yeah. We're in the shower."_ _

__Liam licks his lips. "Feel gross."_ _

__"I bet you do." Brett soaps him up a little, mindless of the fact that he's getting wet too. Liam's head lolls back - his pupils are dark and wide, and he has trouble focussing on Brett._ _

__"We gonna have sex?" he slurs._ _

__Brett's stomach knots. "No."_ _

__"Why not?"_ _

__"You're drunk."_ _

__"'S okay. Done it before. Drunk."_ _

___Like this?_ Brett wonders, thinking of Liam's loose, floppy limbs, vague expression, and inability to stand on his own two feet. _If he's had sex like this then_ -_ _

__"Brett?" Liam mumbles._ _

__"Yeah," Brett says uncomfortably, trying not to think of Liam this drunk and in someone else's hands - someone who isn't him, who might take advantage of him, who might think Liam's need for physical affection is consent. "Well, I don't want to."_ _

__"Why?" Liam blinks slowly. "Did I do somethin'?"_ _

__"No." Brett's starting to feel a strange, anxious throbbing in his chest. "You didn't do anything wrong, Liam, okay? You're really drunk, and you just stopped getting sick, and there's plenty of time to have sex when we're both sober and enjoy it more."_ _

__"You don' wan' to?"_ _

__"Having sex with you when you're this drunk is only a tiny bit more appealing than having sex with a ceiling fan," Brett says, and Liam blinks, again, then breaks into a wide smile._ _

__"'Kay," he says, and leans against Brett's chest more fully._ _

__Brett's not sure what he said that made Liam give it up, or smile like that - which, God, has rendered him almost blind from the intensity of it - but he's grateful for it nonetheless, and Liam's compliant (or just too drunk to resist) when Brett pulls him out of the shower, towels him dry, and helps him back into warm, dry clothes._ _

__"You're great," Liam mumbles as Brett pulls him up and helps him into the main dorm room._ _

__"Yeah? It's been said."_ _

__"Mean it."_ _

__"I know you do, Liam." He pulls the covers back, sits Liam down - tries not to laugh when Liam slumps backwards, but fails to move his legs - and grabs a bucket. "Here. If you need it."_ _

__"Mm," Liam mumbles agreeably._ _

__"C'mon." Brett grabs his legs and swings them into bed. "Need anything?"_ _

__Liam tips his head back and focusses on him with what seems to be monumental effort. "I love you," he murmurs softly._ _

__Brett stands there, leaning over him, wanting to believe that it isn't true - Liam's drunk and drunk people say shit they don't mean all the time, don't they? Drunk people have an altered perception of reality and heightened emotions and..._ _

__And Liam's looking at him with these bright, vulnerable blue eyes, and Brett knows two things: one, Liam is totally wasted. And two: he's telling the absolute truth._ _

__"I love you too," he whispers._ _

__Liam swallows. "For real?"_ _

__Brett smiles. "Yeah. For real. But we can talk about it in the morning, when you aren't drunk."_ _

__"Is morning," Liam mumbles, but his eyes are closing, and by the time Brett climbs into bed and turns out the light, he's asleep._ _

__~*~_ _

__"You're working."_ _

__Brett turns around. Liam's padding across the apartment, wrapped in one of Brett's hoodies and looking sleepy. Still, he's moving easier, and his cheeks are a little pink again._ _

__"Yeah," Brett says, smiling and scooting his chair back. "Had some time."_ _

__"Numbers," Liam says intelligently, sitting on Brett's lap and putting an arm around him._ _

__"Yeah, Liam," Brett says fondly, kissing Liam's jaw and relishing in the scratchy, two-day stubble he feels there. "Numbers."_ _

__Liam yawns. "How long did I sleep?"_ _

__"Five hours or so."_ _

__"You cleaned."_ _

__"Not like I have much else to do."_ _

__"I would've helped."_ _

__"You can help later."_ _

__Liam sighs. "Later" is the magical time in which most of their productivity (and Liam's health) exists; later only seems to roll around once a month, when Liam's been paid by the clinic and he doesn't feel the need to go in as often, and sometimes there's a whole four-day period where Liam's almost up to speed. Almost. He doesn't go; he doesn't donate._ _

__They can't leave the apartment. Liam can; Liam can go down to the store three blocks away, one of the only places still really functional, or he can go to the park. He doesn't. He did, once or twice; both times he came back with a stricken look on his face and something gone behind his eyes._ _

__"There's no one fuckin' out there," he'd said, sinking onto a barstool. "Nobody. It's like the whole world just stopped existing."_ _

__Brett can't go out. Liam doesn't even want to. Somehow, Brett thinks it'd be better if they could do it together, but the only place they can coexist is this apartment - sheltered by specially-built air filters and ducts, with round-the-clock decontamination suites and other such anti-disease memorabilia._ _

__He turns to Liam. "I wish I could go with you."_ _

__Liam's eyes soften. "No," he says. "You don't. You think you do but you don't."_ _

__"If I went I could-"_ _

__"What?" Liam asks softly. "Watch them cut me open? Watch them sedate me? If you got really lucky you could sit and listen to all the involuntary donors cry and beg and scream. Brett... you don't want to be there."_ _

__"Liam-"_ _

__"I don't want you to be there."_ _

__They stare at each other. Liam sighs._ _

__"I don't want to be there either," he admits. "I never wanted to be. But I was because it was okay mostly. Now it isn't."_ _

__"They should keep you apart," Brett says. His voice sounds distant, like he's a thousand miles away. "It's just..."_ _

__"There isn't enough room," Liam says. "They rush us in and out as it is."_ _

__"The doctors?"_ _

__"Yeah. They don't want to, you can kinda tell. But someone must be breathing down their necks about it, or they wouldn't, you know what I mean?"_ _

__Brett nods. He still hates the doctors for what they're doing, even if it's on orders... but Liam's pretty collected about it. And if Liam can be, Brett can at least pretend. He's not the one getting drilled into every other day._ _

__"I'm gonna have a shower," Liam says, standing up. "I fucking reek."_ _

__Brett watches as he walks away - almost easily, but with a slight limp to his step Brett knows is because of his hip. Liam used to move so easily, freely - like he was barely human, with no consideration of how he was coming across to other people, without a care in the world. Brett had never seen anyone move like that before, and hasn't since._ _

__It's another thing this disease has taken from them. Their freedom, their carelessness, their future - it's all gone, and Brett can't look forward when he knows that a cure will come at Liam's sacrifice. He'll exist in this bubble, and when it gets too small..._ _

__He doesn't think about it. He goes to the bed, about to make it, when he sees it - drops of blood on the sheets. Dry. Old._ _

__He swallows. His gorge rises._ _

___Bleach_ , he thinks distantly. _I forgot to buy bleach.__ _

__~*~_ _

__"Yo, Li! Your boyfriend's here!"_ _

__Brett's blushing, awkward, and feeling more than a little out of place when Liam turns around to look. He's standing on the scaffolding of what looks to be a very expensive, half-finished house, and he's not wearing a shirt._ _

__"Hey!" Liam calls. "Gimme a second!"_ _

__Brett feels anxious. He doesn't like Liam being up that high. He could fall. The scaffolding doesn't exactly look all that secure._ _

__After a moment - during which Liam bodily hauls a sheet of plywood up and leans it against the wall - a guy lopes over to Brett and looks at him appraisingly._ _

__"Nice suit," he says._ _

__"Thanks," Brett replies, not exactly sure if that was a heartfelt compliment or mocking so dry he doesn't recognise it as humour. "Got it on sale."_ _

__"Oh yeah?" The guy looks sincerely interested. "Listen, dude, my bro's getting married soon. Reckon you could tell me where you got it from? Kinda need one fitted."_ _

__If there's anything Brett's noticed, it's this: Liam's friends all speak the same way, with the same roughish cadence and general lack of respect for grammar and syntax. They're easygoing and loud and rambunctious and usually drunk when they aren't working, and Liam fits in with them like camouflage._ _

__He's halfway through telling Liam's friend how to get to the store when Liam slides down a ladder and jogs over to them. He's not wearing a shirt - it's a hot day, and none of them are - and his skin is dark, dark bronze and glistening with sweat._ _

__"What's up?" he asks breathlessly._ _

__Brett smiles. "You forgot lunch."_ _

__"Man," Liam's friend sighs. "Wish my missus would bring me lunch."_ _

__"She would if you didn't do stupid shit like hiding in the doorway at home and shooting her with a Nerf gun when she walks in," Liam grins._ _

__"I bet he doesn't care."_ _

__"Perks of bein' gay I guess." He turns to Brett, smiles. "Thanks. You got time? I can take my break, eat with you."_ _

__"Sure," Brett replies, following as Liam heads towards the plastic table and chairs set up under a tree._ _

__"How romantic," Liam's friend calls after them, and Liam responds by turning and flipping him off, grinning to himself._ _

__"Who's that?" Brett asks._ _

__"Him? That's Joey. Dumb as shit, but he's a good guy." Liam sits at the table and smiles at Brett - it's not a grin, like the one he wears around his friends, but a genuine, soft smile, meant for Brett only. "Thanks for lunch. He bug you much?"_ _

__"Wanted to know about my suit."_ _

__"It does look pretty good," Liam says, arching an eyebrow. "I reckon if you let me take it off you I could make improvements, though."_ _

__"Is that a fact?"_ _

__"Damn right it's a fact."_ _

__"Are you _flirting_ with me, Liam Dunbar?"_ _

__"Yeah, why, is it working?"_ _

__It always works, and Liam knows it, and Brett can tell he knows it by the way his eyes glitter and his mouth curves in a knowing smirk._ _

__"Maybe," he says, and Liam must remember that, because five hours later, with their work days finished and Liam showered but still hot and bronzed from the sun, they're in their bed and Liam's whispering little nothings into his ear as he moves inside Brett, some of which sound like his name._ _

__"Liam," Brett murmurs, feeling Liam's back flex under his hands. "Liam, I really fucking love you."_ _

__"Same," Liam gasps, and he lurches up to kiss Brett and comes, and Brett follows right along with him._ _

__~*~_ _

__"I hate the smell of that shit."_ _

__Liam's referring to Brett's brand-new, five litre bottle of bleach. He's on the couch, eating chicken noodles, and watching as Brett scrubs the spots of blood out of the white fitted sheet in his hand._ _

__"Yeah," Brett says. "Me too."_ _

__Hatred doesn't even begin to cover how he feels about it. But Liam might think he's crazy if he breaks down crying over how much he really hates the stuff._ _

__"Why do it?" Liam asks._ _

__"Do what? Bleach the sheets?"_ _

__Liam nods. He's twirling noodles around on his fork thoughtfully._ _

__"We can't afford a new set every time you bleed through," Brett says softly._ _

__"Yes we can," Liam rebukes gently, and he's right. The payments he gets from the clinic - for his "immense contribution" to the "scientific and medical advancement of the human race" - are more than enough to cover the rent, bills, food, and leave them with plenty leftover._ _

__There's money. But somehow ordering new sheets every time a set gets ruined feels like giving up. Giving in._ _

__"Well," Brett says. "I don't want to."_ _

__Which makes him sound approximately five, and like someone who doesn't want to share their toys. Liam watches him steadily for a moment - he's noticed too; he's not stupid or unobservant, he just usually chooses not to comment._ _

__"Okay," he says simply._ _

__Brett sits. Stares at Liam. He's not sure what to say but he feels like he's expected to say something; it's a nerve wracking feeling, one he doesn't get with Liam often, but can identify when it happens. Probably because it's such a unique feeling; Liam rarely expects anything of him, and what he does expect are things Brett's happy to give - kindness, healthy meals, sex. The kind of things that make almost everyone happy._ _

__So this - this is different. Liam does want something from him, but he won't say what._ _

__"Uh," Brett says, and Liam's eyebrow lifts a little._ _

__Brett sighs, hangs his head. "We bought these together," he says quietly. "When you moved in. We both had basically no money but you had even less than me. You still paid for most of them because you were behind on rent and felt bad."_ _

__"Feels like a long time ago," Liam murmurs, almost wistfully._ _

__"Yeah." Brett swallows; he can feel a lump rising into his throat. "Anyway. I don't... I don't feel like I can give up on them. They can be replaced, but..."_ _

__"Replacing them doesn't mean I didn't pay for them," Liam says gently. "It doesn't... erase any of our history, if that's what you're worried about."_ _

__Brett looks down. He can't breathe._ _

__He hears Liam move. Hears the click of the fork against their coffee table and the cup of noodles being set down, and then Liam's footsteps, padding over to him slowly. He tries not to cry, because Liam's never really known what to do when he cries._ _

__"Brett," Liam says softly._ _

__"Yeah?" Brett whispers._ _

__Liam's hands touch his, then begin to pull the sheets from him. "How about I do it this time?"_ _

__"No." Brett looks up; he can barely see Liam through the haze of tears. "No, Liam, it's okay, it's - I'm being stupid, it's just fucking bleach-"_ _

__"Don't you think I notice?" Liam whispers. "Don't you think I can tell that whenever I bleed you move me to the couch and you strip the bed and you run the fan in the bathroom so that I can't hear you crying? I see how you look whenever you realise you're going to be using bleach. I'm not an idiot. Don't do this to yourself anymore."_ _

__"If I don't," Brett croaks, "if I don't... bleach the sheets, and clean, and keep everything... nice, and normal, I'm giving up. Do you get it? If I buy a new set of sheets it's like I'm giving up on making these ones work."_ _

__Liam looks at him, his face broken open and pained._ _

__"Or," he says eventually, "you buy a new set of sheets, and it's not giving up. It's just... recognising that things have changed, and that we have to as well. And that... doesn't mean what we were before isn't real. It is."_ _

__"I want to be back there," Brett chokes._ _

__"We can't," Liam says. "We never will be again. But maybe we can make something better now."_ _

__"How? How do we make something better when I can't go outside and you're half-dead most of the time?"_ _

__"I don't know," Liam murmurs. "But we can't do it by living in the past. That's gone. We can't get that back. And you'll torture yourself trying, dude, believe me. I've been there. It sucks. You just... have to accept what's going on now-"_ _

__"I don't accept it," Brett says, aghast. "It's wrong. It's fucked up-"_ _

__"Nobody's saying it's right. It just is the way it is for now."_ _

__"You know how many times in history people have accepted something that they've been promised is only temporary?" Brett asks weakly. "Or accepted it just because - because it was easier-"_ _

__"If we don't donate, you die!" Liam snaps._ _

__Brett stops._ _

__"You aren't hearing me," Liam says, calming a little. "I accept things for now because for now, I can help. I hate the conscription. But do I accept my lot in it? Yeah, I do. Because I chose it. I did it for you. And given the chance I'd do it all again."_ _

__"No," Brett says._ _

__"Yes," Liam replies. "And I have. Almost a hundred times now I've chosen to do it again. I don't regret it. And neither should you."_ _

__"One day it won't be you walking through the door," Brett whispers, taking Liam's face in his hands. "One day it's gonna be some no-name doctors in suits to deliver the bad news that you, that you died, that you were too weak-"_ _

__"I told you," Liam says, and Brett shuts up, because Liam's eyes are blazing and it engulfs Brett, totally, burning away the words that are fighting to get out. "I'm not like everyone else."_ _

__"What if you are?" Brett whispers._ _

__"I'm not," Liam says confidently. "And I'm never going to die."_ _


	3. En Bloc

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm typing in gloves but not wine drunk this time, pls forgive typos
> 
> can you guys even fucking believe i've kept to an actual uploading schedule for this? lmao

**En Bloc: on mass; all together**

~*~

They buy new sheets. White ones, soft and silky as clouds, and they’ll show the blood more, but the bleach won’t stain in the same places when they use it.

Brett has a panic attack when they’re delivered. He sits on the floor and hyperventilates as his mind whirls through space and comes to a hundred different and ugly ways Liam could die and leave him alone, and Liam finds him like that - comes through the door after a donation, bone-tired and whiter than their new sheets, and he sits next to Brett and coaches him through breathing exercises until he feels human again - until the deafening panic in his head, bigger than the universe itself, has reduced to a quiet hum.

“What did they do today?” he asks Liam.

Liam looks at him tiredly, wipes his eyes, and leans his head against the kitchen counter. “Marrow,” he says softly. “Some tissue samples.”

“How much?”

Liam shrugs, winces.

“Where from?”

“Spine.”

Brett’s world lurches. “Let me see.”

So Liam shows Brett the bandage on his back. He’s shaking a little, but the dressing has been done well, and Liam says he’s not in too much pain - just tired and a little sore.

Brett rests his hand on Liam’s spine, just above the bandage, and feels him breathing. He starts to rub, slowly, wondering if Liam’s mom ever rubbed his back when he was sick or in pain or just sad. Probably not.

“Hmm,” Liam sighs, leaning his forehead against the counter.

“Nice?”

“Mm. Don’t stop.”

Liam rarely asks for anything, so Brett keeps going. They sit on the floor for half an hour, until Liam’s breathing begins to even out in a way that indicates he’s about to fall asleep.

“Li,” Brett says softly. “C'mon. You can’t sleep on the floor. Bed?”

“Hungry,” Liam says sleepily.

“I’ll make you something to eat,” Brett says. “And - tea?”

“Coffee,” Liam argues, but there’s no real fire behind it. “Will you keep going? Later?”

“Yeah.” Brett turns away; his eyes are watering. “I’ll keep going ‘till you fall asleep.”

~*~

Liam lets him look.

They’re lying on the bed, and Liam’s on his side, shirt hiked up, with Brett rubbing his back slowly. The TV is mumbling in the background, white noise that Liam appears to be riveted to.

Brett’s fingertips skim the edges of the bandage. Liam tenses a little, then relaxes; he looks at Brett over his shoulder.

“What?” he asks softly.

Brett swallows. He’s never seen a wound on Liam’s back before.

“It needs to be changed anyway,” Liam murmurs. “If you… want to look… for whatever reason…”

Brett says nothing. He goes to the bathroom and gets a new bandage - he doesn’t want to expose whatever is underneath to the open air - and settles back on the bed. Liam sighs, and his chest expands with it, ribs and miles of somewhat golden skin, remnants of healthy, sun-filled summers.

“I’ll be gentle,” Brett says, almost like he’s telling himself.

Liam looks over his shoulder. “I know,” he says quietly.

Brett peels the bandage off, feeling his breath catch when he sees Liam’s back - the skin is puffy and bruised, black and red and purple and horrifically fresh, with a visible needle site right in the middle, smack on Liam’s spine.

“Oh, fuck,” he moans.

“You gonna puke?” Liam asks anxiously.

“No, just - it looks really fucking bad.”

“I can’t see the ones on my back. I wouldn’t know.”

His throat is tight. “Does it hurt?” he whispers, voice breaking. His fingers tremble as he skims the area, but Liam doesn’t move.

He shrugs. “When I move. It’s a little sore. But not really.” He rolls a little, but Brett pushes him back - he needs to put the new bandage on. “You gonna tell me to stop?”

“I promised you I wouldn’t.”

“Hmm. Okay.”

Brett smooths the new bandage down, pats Liam’s back. Liam looks at him.

“C'mere.”

“Where?”

“Sit in front of me.”

“Why?”

“Fuck’s sake, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”

“Judging by the context you used that in, you’ve got no idea what it is.” But Brett moves around and sits in front of Liam, then lies down on his side when he’s tugged that way.

“Alright,” Liam says. “Look. You live in your own head too much. Which you can’t help, 'cause it’s not like you can get out more. But you gotta stop thinking that they’re gonna fucking kill me, dude. They don’t want that. That’s not what they’re trying to do.”

“They’re hurting you,” Brett whispers.

“They’re good people,” Liam says simply. “Doing shitty jobs. Who probably go home at night and wonder if they’re really doing well by their oath. And you know what? I don’t envy them. I’d rather be here having my back rubbed.”

“We both know that’s not all this is-”

“Shut up, I’m coping. This is how I cope. You know that.”

Brett rubs his face. “Christ sake’s, Liam,” he moans. “You have a hole in your fucking spine, I should be consoling you-”

“It’s only a little one,” Liam says, so reasonably that Brett starts to cry. “Ah, fuck. I’m serious, dude! It’s so tiny. The needle isn’t that big. I exaggerated, I do that-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Brett moans. “Jesus Christ, Liam, stop kidding about it! It’s not a joke!”

“I know!” Liam yells, and Brett flinches. Liam stares at him for a moment, breathing hard, eyes alight and furious.

“I know it isn’t a fucking joke!” Liam says, his voice still ringing and loud in the silence of the apartment. “But I’m fucking scared and joking is the only way I know how to deal with it!”

“Scared?” Brett asks. “So stop-”

“Jesus, dude, I’m not scared of the donations.” Liam rolls onto his back and fists his hair unhappily. “How many times have I done those? I’m not - I’m scared that no matter what I do, you might still die. It might not be enough.”

Brett stares at him for a moment. Then, slowly, he sits up, rolls over, and climbs on top of Liam.

“I’m not like other people,” he says.

Liam blinks. “Huh?”

“I’m not like other people,” Brett says. “I’m not going to die.” The words stick; he can’t say them as confidently as Liam, like they’ll be true as long as he believes it. But he has to try.

“Really?” Liam’s smile is fragile. “Okay. That’s good.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m not going to either.”

~*~

When Brett’s twenty two and Liam’s nineteen, Lori is diagnosed with cancer.

They fly to Connecticut. It’s December and Liam’s never been anywhere colder than California, and he spends the whole trip shivering intermittently, at least until Brett finds him a warm coat.

Lori’s fifteen. She’s scared but she doesn’t want to let on; she pushes everyone away, ruthlessly, even Brett. His parents, as far as he can tell, haven’t shed a tear. They’re disconnected like that - even though they care, probably, they won’t show it.

Brett gets absorbed in the medical terminology. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, bone marrow transplantation. Platelets. Dilaudid for the pain, fluoxetine for the anxiety, a PICC line for the drugs to be administered. Cold caps to prevent hair loss. Acute myeloid leukaemia; it’s a rare cancer, rarer in children, and it hits everyone hard.

Lori rebels. She’s never rebelled against anything in her life; now, with cancer hanging over her head and unable to get revenge on her own out-of-control, faulty cells, she takes it out on their parents; she goes out, stays up late, and otherwise does as she pleases.

Brett’s scared. He stays that way until he comes downstairs, one night, at two in the morning - only to find Liam and Lori curled up on the couch together, under a blanket, not saying anything. They’re playing Call Of Duty.

“Not that game,” Brett says, coming over. “You’re gonna corrupt her. Halo is way better.”

“Fuck off,” Liam laughs, but he looks tired.

“I like this one,” Lori says.

“Yeah? Alright. Lemme show you how the masters do it.”

“Where are they?” she asks, looking around, and Brett’s not afraid to wrestle the controller out of her hands and show her how it’s done.

~*~

_Everyone dies._

It’s sort of one of those things that you don’t think about until you do; you don’t think about death until someone is dying, and by the time you’ve become accustomed to the idea that death is real and unavoidable and happens to everyone, it’s too late and they’re gone.

Brett watches Liam sleep. Watches his chest move, up and down, slowly and evenly. He’s breathing so easily tonight, like there’s nothing at all wrong with him.

He gets out of bed. Wanders over to the window that spans the entire wall of their apartment and stares out it; he can see the clinic from here, a repurposed office building joined to the conglomerate of buildings that make up the hospital.

He wants to burn it to the fucking ground.

“Come to bed,” Liam’s voice says sleepily. “I’m cold.”

“You’re always cold.”

“Yeah, 'cause I’m skinny now.” Liam rolls a little; his skin glows pale in the moonlight, and his eyes are soft, blue against the backdrop of the new, white sheets. “Come to bed,” he whispers. “Keep me warm.”

And so Brett does, because it’s the one way he can fight back; if he could crawl inside Liam’s body and heat him from the inside out, he would. But he can’t, so he settles for lying across Liam’s body and burying his face in the side of his neck - scratchy, musky, unmistakably Liam - and closes his eyes.

“I love you,” Liam says. “Even if I go I’ll always be here.”

Go. Die. Interchangeable things. Liam trying to be gentle about it makes it worse somehow.

“You promised me you weren’t going to die.”

A pause. “That’s true. But if I did.”

“But you won’t?”

“I won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Liam…”

And Liam pulls him into a kiss, his legs curling around Brett’s hips, and Brett forgets. He forgets as he pulls Liam’s clothes off him and touches his warm, warm skin - how can someone so warm feel so cold? - and then, slowly, sinks into his body, his heat.

“I love you,” he whispers into Liam’s neck, and Liam gasps back at him. “Don’t leave me.”

“Won’t,” Liam gasps back. “Can’t.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t. I won’t ever.”

_That’s not what I meant_ , Brett thinks, but before he can say it, Liam’s arching under him and coming and twisting and so beautifully, wonderfully alive that Brett follows him right over the edge, to a place that feels so good and so safe he doesn’t have to think anymore.

~*~

Liam’s donating today.

It starts off normal. It’s been two weeks since his last one, and he leaves with more energy. The day rolls on. Brett cleans.

Midday comes and goes. Then two. Then three.

The phone rings at four, as Brett’s pacing anxiously and wondering just who the hell he’s supposed to call for answers. He lunges for it, getting to it between the first and second ring.

“Hello?”

“Brett?”

Liam. He sounds frightened. Exhausted. “Liam,” he breathes. “What-”

“Something went wrong.” He’s been crying; Brett can hear it in his voice. “I can’t come home today. I have to stay here.”

“What?” Brett demands shakily. “You have to-”

“I can’t-” Liam sounds like he’s choking down a sob. “I can’t, um, really walk. I just - I can’t come home, okay? I have to stay here. For tonight. Maybe tomorrow night as well.”

“Liam,” Brett whispers. “I - I’ll come get you-”

“Brett, God, you can’t.” He really is crying, Brett realises. Full tilt, the way he’s only done a few times, when he’s in pain or feverish and he doesn’t have any energy to fight it off. “You’ll get sick. Don’t come. I promise I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Can we stay on the phone?” Brett asks. “I’ll talk to you all night. I’ll do anything.”

“I’m scared,” Liam whispers.

“I know.” Brett’s heart is pounding. “I know you are. You’re alive, Liam, okay? You’re alive and you’ll see me soon enough. I promise. I’ll be waiting at the door when you get here. Whenever that is. And I’ll make you tea.”

He knows it’s bad when Liam doesn’t argue back. “Okay,” he whispers wetly. “Yeah. Tea.”

Brett licks his lips. “I love you,” he says helplessly.

“I wanna come home,” Liam replies, and Brett stands and listens to him breathe for hours.

~*~

It’s past dinner when he hears a key in the lock the next day.

He vaults off the couch and gets there before Liam even manages to get it open; he pulls it back, and Liam’s standing there, looking like absolute hell, his hand still holding his key to where the lock would have been.

“My hands were shaking,” he explains weakly, and Brett pulls him in and holds him for a minute - more. Probably five. Maybe even ten.

“Don’t let me go,” Liam mumbles into his chest. “I’m gonna fall.”

“I won’t let you fall. Come on. I’ll help you.”

“I can’t.”

So Brett thinks _fuck the rules; fuck everything we’ve done before; we’re doing it differently now_. He bends down and picks Liam up and carries him inside - and Liam doesn’t even protest, just leans his head against Brett’s shoulder and holds on - to the couch, and settles him down there before making a cup of tea.

“What happened?” he asks, bringing it back and sitting on the couch near Liam’s hip.

Liam rubs his face exhaustedly. “I just - I didn’t do well. Reacted badly to, I dunno, a drug, or the procedure, or - I dunno.”

“Did they tell you?”

He jerks his head at the door. “Bag,” he says tiredly. “They gave me a bunch of information. I don’t understand any of it.”

Brett goes and gets the bag. “Someone should have talked you through it,” he mutters. “It’s a huge breach of ethics and conduct if they’re doing shit you don’t understand and nobody’s really explaining it to you.”

Liam looks at him exhaustedly. He’s breathing heavily, like he’s tired.

Brett reads slowly. A lot of it goes over his head, but he does pick up on a few things - like the fact that Liam’s body is giving up. It doesn’t want to donate anymore and it’s producing less and less of the stuff they actually want.

“You’ve been ordered to cut back,” Brett says quietly, and the paper trembles in his hand. “Once a fortnight.”

Liam swallows. “What’s happening to me?”

“You…” He shakes his head. “I’m not a doctor. But by the sounds of it, your body’s had enough. It’s saying no. You reacted badly because they tried to take something that wasn’t there, and they took more than you could be without.”

Liam nods slowly. “Am I dying?”

“You aren’t dying.”

“Could it kill me?”

Brett hesitates. “Yes.”

Liam nods. He looks startlingly blank.

“Liam?” Brett asks.

“Okay,” Liam says calmly. “Can I have something to eat?”

~*~

“Do you know what it looks like?”

Brett looks up. Liam’s looking a little better - Brett’s put down a fresh bandage over his shoulder and gotten him chicken noodles and coffee, and their warmth and flavour have brought colour into his face and life into his eyes.

“What… what looks like?” Brett asks slowly.

“Trapper,” Liam replies.

Brett’s heart lurches uncomfortably. Trapper - the virulent disease that’s swept the globe and left most countries operating under Marshal Law. It was named after the man who discovered it, just because the symptoms were so varied and awful nobody wanted a reminder of them in the form of a name.

“No,” Brett murmurs, though he has heard stories. “I don’t… really know what it looks like. Most I’ve seen is those lists on CNN.”

Symptom criteria, ranging from mild to severe, usually a predictor of how long the afflicted person will live after diagnosis. He’s never actually seen the symptoms, though.

“You said you’d come and get me,” Liam says. “When I was at the hospital.”

“I would have.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Liam snaps, and Brett blinks, surprised. “Look, I go there pretty often, dude. The sick people aren’t always separated from us. I’ve seen them. Nothing is worth you risking that.”

“You-”

“Especially not me.”

There’s a long pause. They stare at each other. Liam’s the first to drop his gaze, focussing instead on his chicken noodles.

“What’s it look like?” Brett asks softly.

“Jesus, dude,” Liam mutters. “I’m not-”

“You don’t want me to go out? Even if it’s to try and help you? Fine. I’ll do what you want. But I want to know why I’m doing it, Liam.”

Liam’s scowling, but he mumbles, “Okay, fair enough,” and sits up a little straighter, wincing. “Look,” he murmurs. “It’s… it’s pretty fuckin’ ugly. I don’t… know much about Trapper, really, I don’t. But I know what it looks like. It’s… people’s necks, they just…” Apparently lost for words, Liam makes a vague swelling notion with his hands. “Tumours, apparently, in the lymph nodes? They don’t even look like people. And sometimes they choke to death but sometimes the doctors intubate them to keep them alive.”

Brett feels kind of sick. “Wouldn’t it be…”

“Kinder to let them die?” Liam asks bluntly. “Euthanize them? Yeah. Absolutely. But doctors don’t give up and we never got euthanasia laws here, so they just suffer instead. And the worst part is that - there’s more lymph nodes in the human body, and they all get infected by these tumours.”

“That’s why nobody survives,” Brett says. “Because the tumours take out the immune system.”

Liam’s rubbing his face with his palms, a tic indicating that he’s distressed. “Not just that,” he says. “Massive blood loss from haemorrhaging. Fever. The list goes on and on. You know how long it takes them to die? Weeks.”

Brett swallows, and Liam leans over, grabs the back of his neck, and pulls him in until his forehead rests against Liam’s. He can hear how shaky his breathing is - from the weakness leftover from donation, or from emotion, he isn’t sure.

“I don’t want you out there,” Liam whispers against his mouth. “Not for me. Not for anything.”

~*~

The lacrosse championships see Liam scoring four goals before being taken out in a bloody collision with the opposition.

Brett sees it go down - he’s towards the back, and Liam’s got the ball, and he’s running - he’s small, but he’s built like a tank and lightning fast and totally reckless, hard to stop once he gets going.

If it was fair play, Brett would’ve still had trouble letting it go. As it is, it’s a foul - someone swings their stick so hard Liam’s helmet goes flying, and he lands on the ground in a crumpled heap.

Brett knew he liked the kid. But seeing Liam like that makes his blood go red and before he has time to stop and think, his body is moving across the field and tackling the player who took out Liam, and the ref is yelling and blowing his whistle.

Later, as they sit on the stands - Liam’s got a mild concussion and a broken nose, which took almost twenty minutes for the medics to get under control - Liam turns to him, giving a wince of pain. His eyes are going black at the corners.

“You know,” he says, kind of thickly, “you didn’t need to defend my honour or anything.”

“Guy took you out because he was a petty bitch,” Brett mutters. “Nobody gets to hurt you like that.”

Liam looks at him, seeming oddly touched by that. “Serious?”

“Yeah. Long as I’m around, nobody gets to hurt you.”

“Wow. Guess you like me, huh?” Liam’s words are casual, but there’s a vulnerability behind his eyes and his face belies his uncertainty. He’s dressed - jeans, converse, t-shirt, which is a standard Liam affair. He looks kind of beautiful like this.

“I really like you.” Brett watches Liam shiver. “You cold?”

“Little. Yeah.”

“Where’s your hoodie?”

“I dunno. Somewhere.”

Brett shrugs out of his and hands it over. Liam watches him for a moment before taking it, sliding his arms into it and bunching the rest of it around him. It’s way too big.

There’s a pause. They look up at the stars, glittering above them in a rare display of clarity on a clear, relatively smogless night.

“This is kinda gay,” Liam says bluntly, and Brett laughs, because what else was he expecting? Liam’s surprising and blunt and everything Brett didn’t see coming, and it’s hit him so fast his world is reeling and he can’t tell up from down.

“On a sliding scale of straight to gay,” Brett says, “I think it was the sex that put us firmly at the gay end.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Liam says, quite cheerfully, as he leans into Brett. “Thanks. For the hoodie.”

“Anytime.”

“Can I keep it?”

“What?” Brett laughs. It’s only when he looks down that he realises Liam looks dead serious. “Wait, really?”

“It’s soft. Smells like you.”

“Uh.” Brett blinks, totally taken aback. Liam deflects his feelings and then he doesn’t, oscillates between the two so quickly Brett gets whiplash and can’t breathe. “Yeah. You can have it.”

“Really?” Liam smiles.

“Yeah. All yours.”

“Hmm.” Liam tips his head back a little; Brett wants to run a hand through his hair, blonde at the moment and glittering under the starlight. “You took out that guy 'cause he hurt me.”

“Yeah. He deserved it.”

“Nobody’s ever hurt someone 'cause they hurt me before,” Liam says seriously.

“Nobody? Nobody stuck up for you ever?”

“Nope.” Liam touches his nose gingerly. “He fucked my nose up pretty good.”

“Don’t worry,” Brett assures him. “I felt a rib crack when I hit him.”

“Oh, great,” Liam says cheerfully, and they laugh for a little while about that - sit out under the stars until Liam declares that it’s too cold and stands up.

“C'mon,” he says, holding a hand out to Brett.

“Where’re we-”

“My dorm.”

“Yeah?”

“Stay the night.”

He’s never stayed the night at Liam’s dorm before. “Sure?”

“Yeah.” Liam tugs the hoodie closer. “I mean, the bed’s fuckin’ small and your tall ass is gonna make sleeping hard, but yeah. Stay.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Morning blow jobs or French toast.”

“Why not both?” Brett whines.

“I won’t have time before class for both,” Liam admits, and Brett laughs, follows him, and thinks about how different his life would’ve been at this point if Liam hadn’t crash-landed into it and sent him reeling.

“Skip,” Brett says.

“You nasty lawbreaker,” Liam says, grinning. “Okay. But I get head too.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Heh, hard.”

“You’re actually a fucking twelve year old.”

“Guess you’re in shit, then.”

“Liam!”

~*~

Brett opens his eyes.

He blinks, totally disoriented. His feet are cold, and he’s standing up, but he knows he was just asleep. He was dreaming, and it’s hanging onto him like a wet blanket, sticking and cold.

“Brett, hey.”

He turns around. Liam’s standing behind him, looking nervous, reaching for him. It’s only then that Brett realises he’s standing at the front door, his hand on the handle.

“Wha?” he asks dumbly.

Liam steps forward hesitantly. “I think you were sleepwalking,” he murmurs. “Come back.”

Brett heads over. “You shouldn’t be up,” he says blankly.

Liam takes his hand. “My shoulder’s sore, my legs aren’t fuckin’ broken,” Liam says. “C'mon.”

He’s always followed Liam, and he doesn’t hesitate now - he climbs back into bed, blinking dully into the light of the lava lamp Liam refuses to throw out. Their apartment is a weird mix of the sleek, urban look Brett likes and the cluttered, eclectic stuff Liam’s partial to, but he wouldn’t change it. It’s theirs.

“Why is your lava lamp always on?” he asks distantly.

“Because it’s fuckin’ cool as shit?”

“And… why is it being propped up between two Mass Effect figurines?”

The base is broken, but Liam’s got Commander Shepard and Garrus Vakarian - names Brett can’t believe he knows, let alone cares about - propping up the majority of the square lamp with their tiny plastic arms.

“It’s a metaphor,” Liam says, slumping back into the pillows.

“A metaphor for what, exactly?”

He’s mostly expecting Liam to shrug and spin him some utter bullshit - that will probably prove that Liam has a very weak understanding of what a metaphor actually is - but he doesn’t. He looks at Brett and says, “Heroes bear weight so nobody else has to.”

It sounds cheesy. It’s not Liam’s words, his phrasing - he’s read it somewhere, picked it up from a book or movie and had it stick like glue to his mind. For that, it’s important, because as smart as Liam is - world smart - he retains almost nothing ad verbatim and only gleans from books and movies their messages, unable to fully express them.

“Heroes never work alone,” Brett counters. “There’s always someone backing them up.”

Liam smiles weakly. “That’s fiction.”

~*~

Brett finds Liam after class.

He waits outside the building, getting odd looks from students for his attire - a suit, because he works in a corporate job now and has to look at least somewhat formal and presentable.

He doesn’t have to wait long. Liam lopes out of the building, alone for once - Liam seems to be consistently surrounded by people he calls friends but deliberately shuts out - and spots him almost immediately.

Brett can see him smile from where he stands, and he returns it, staying where he is as Liam cuts through the swarm of tired-looking students and makes a beeline for him.

“Hey,” he says as he approaches. “Work?”

“I just finished,” Brett says, smiling as Liam tucks himself underneath Brett’s arm and keeps walking. “How was class?”

Liam shrugs, despondent. He hasn’t enjoyed college for a while now, he hates living in the dorms, the financial stress of loans are getting to him - Brett’s a little worried about him, really.

“Listen,” Brett says, smiling. “I got a surprise for you.”

Liam’s head lifts; he looks curious. “Mm?”

“Yeah. C'mon. You got anymore classes?”

“None that I care about.”

Brett can’t make him go to class, so he leads the way to his car and gets in. It’s a half-hour drive to the apartment building, with Liam looking progressively more and more confused as they get deeper and deeper into the city.

“Where’re we going?”

“Nowhere special.”

“Oh, good.” Liam pulls his hoodie off, revealing a “zombies hate fast food” t-shirt and a few of his tattoos. “I think I’d get us kicked out.”

Brett laughs. “I like you just the way you are.”

“I know, it’s a miracle,” Liam says cheerfully. “Seriously, where’re we going?”

Brett pulls up at the apartment building, trying to hide his smile, and parks in his spot. Liam follows him out of the car, looking around curiously.

“Swanky. Seems like the kinda place that has a doorman.”

“It doesn’t,” Brett says, “but it is pretty nice.”

“It - huh?”

“Come on, come on!” Brett grabs his hand and pulls him along, gratified when Liam stumbles along after him with no questions or resistance.

They take the elevator up. Liam presses all the buttons, grinning when Brett sighs and wonders if he’ll ever be able to take Liam anywhere that has more than one floor.

Brett unlocks the door when they get there, pushes it open, and lets Liam through first. He wanders in, curiously - like a cat seeing its new home for the first time, almost, and whistles.

“It’s nice. What is this, a display home?” He squints at Brett. “Wait, why’re we here?”

Brett smiles softly. “It’s mine.”

Liam blinks at him, then grins. “Serious?”

“I moved in last week,” Brett admits. “I didn’t tell you 'cause I wanted it to look nice before I brought you round here the first time.”

Liam spins in a circle, staring at the high ceilings and the huge, wall-to-wall window that takes up the entirety of the north-facing wall. “This is amazing,” he breathes. “Jesus.”

Brett picks up the envelope on the countertop and nudges Liam, waiting until he turns around to hand it to him. Liam blinks.

“What’s this?”

“Open it and find out, dummy.”

Liam peels the edge open, and Brett watches, hoping he hasn’t made a gross miscalculation about the seriousness of their relationship.

“A card?” Liam’s smiling. “We don’t do _cards_.”

“We do now. At least I do.”

Liam opens it. For a moment, he looks confused; a few seconds later, his expression melts into one of gratitude and confusion.

“Is this…?”

“Your key,” Brett says. “I know you hate the dorms. You don’t have to live here… come and go as you like.” Liam’s staring at him with an unreadable expression, one that Brett’s never known how to decipher and knows, from experience, could quickly tip either way.

“I don’t want to… pressure you into moving in here, you’re nineteen, that’s young,” Brett hurries to say. “For all I know you don’t feel the same I do. But I want you to know that… I want you here. I want you here as often as you want to be here.”

Liam opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“Sorry,” Brett whispers. “I thought-”

Liam’s crying, he realises, probably before Liam even does. He moves to wipe the tears away, by reflex, and Liam catches his wrist delicately and kisses the heel of his palm wordlessly.

“I’m sorry,” Brett says helplessly. “I thought I - I thought you would want-”

“Don’t,” Liam says, his voice rolling across glass. “Nobody’s ever wanted me anywhere before.”

Brett’s heart falls right through the floor and gets crushed beneath the elevator. “That’s not-”

“Don’t say it’s not true,” Liam says. “It is true, but that doesn’t matter right now anyway, because-” He traces the key with the pads of his fingers; he’s left handed, and Brett watches his hand move in reverse to his own. “Because you… want me? Here?”

“Yes,” Brett says. “I want you here.”

Liam stares at him. “Are you sure?” he asks. “I feel like-”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Brett says, and he’s telling the truth, so he doesn’t need to worry that Liam will think he’s lying. “I got the key cut right after I signed the lease. I just needed to find time to tell you.” What Liam said before rises to the surface of his mind. “Nobody ever-”

“Wanted me anywhere,” Liam finishes. “I was wrong no matter where I tried to be out of the way. But you don’t…” His fingers are tracing the key again. “You don’t want me out of the way, do you?” he asks uncertainly. “Because you… you don’t think I’m a problem…?”

“God, Liam,” Brett whispers, stepping closer. “I love you to pieces, okay? You aren’t a problem, and I don’t want you out of the way. I can’t give you what your parents didn’t but… I can give you something else, and I want to.”

Liam’s eyes are glittering dangerously. “Um,” he says weakly, and his voice breaks. “I - thank you. I don’t - I don’t know what to-”

Brett steps forward and pulls him into a hug, and Liam leans against him, his eyes wetting the front of Brett’s shirt.

“I won’t be able to pay you back for this, Brett.”

Brett pulls away. “I don’t want you to pay me back,” he says. “I just want you here. If this is where you wanna be.”

Liam nods, staring up at him wordlessly.

“I guess we better go back to your dorm and get some clothes,” Brett says, smiling a little. “I uh, I got a few movies. I thought you could stay the night here.”

Liam’s smile is fragile when it spreads across his face. “Do you have a bed?”

“I have a mattress,” Brett says, and Liam chuckles - a little wetly, he thinks, but ignores. “I can’t find a bedframe I like.”

“A mattress is fine.”

~*~

The eighth round of human trials for the Trapper cure are, according to almost every doctor involved, a “colossal failure”.

Brett tries not to see Liam folding into the couch, like a marionette with cut strings, at the news; he doesn’t want to see the way Liam’s fingertips play at his collarbone, his shoulder, and then his hip, when they slide downwards. Brett knows he’s thinking _all for nothing_ , and he wants to tell Liam differently, that it isn’t, but he can’t know for sure.

Liam leans his head on Brett’s shoulder. He’s staring right through the TV, at something Brett can’t make out with his own eyes.

“Liam,” Brett says softly.

A few tears spill out from Liam’s eyes. Brett’s gut clenches around the stone that’s settled inside it, and he leans close, kisses Liam’s temple and rubs his back and prays - honest to God prays, and he’s not even religious, doesn’t believe in Heaven or Hell or anything in between, but he prays, because they need a little intervention right now.

Liam doesn’t know he’s crying. He looks startled when Brett wipes his face, goes to do it himself. “Shit,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Brett says helplessly, and he wants to follow it up with “it’s okay” but he doesn’t, because Liam gives him a look that cuts his sentence at the knees.

~*~

Liam doesn’t usually know when he’s crying.

This is something it’s taken Brett a long time to learn; Liam must be sufficiently screwed up from his childhood to have no conscious part in whether or not he cries. It’s not that he can’t stop it; it’s that he doesn’t know it’s happening.

Brett comes home some two weeks after he’s given Liam the key to his apartment and is thoroughly surprised to see Liam, sitting at the kitchen counter, his face in his hands and his phone abandoned next to him. He’s only wearing boxers and a t-shirt, and from this, Brett can tell he didn’t even leave that day - not to go to work, not to go to class, not to do anything. He probably didn’t even exit the front door to check the mail (which he sometimes does - he likes to mock Brett’s admittedly strange interest in door-to-door shopping magazines).

“Hey,” Brett says cautiously.

Liam looks up from his hands - Brett’s shocked to see that his eyes are red and his face is wet with fresh tears. “Hi,” he croaks.

“Jesus, Liam, what’s wrong?” Brett asks hurrying over.

“Huh?” Liam wipes his face, almost experimentally. “I - oh. I didn’t know I was…” He shakes his head, rubs his face. “Mom called,” he says tiredly.

“Oh.” Liam’s mom might never have lifted a hand to hit him, but she never lifted a hand to try and help him, either, and from what Brett can tell she’s now firmly entrenched in a very hypocritical belief system and a holier-than-thou attitude.

Brett flicks the kettle on, drops his keys into the little wooden box on the counter - Liam’s idea, so he doesn’t lose anything important, like the seven takeout menus he’s already amassed, his keys, or the little electronic dog that Liam somehow programmed to bark relentlessly whenever he turns it on - and then loosens his tie. Liam watches.

“So?” Brett asks softly. “What happened?”

Liam smiles wanly. “You know Mom.”

“I don’t, actually,” Brett reminds him softly, pushing a box of tissues towards him.

“Right.” Liam wipes his face messily - he’s just someone who Brett doesn’t think has ever used tissues of his own accord. “She called me up, asked what was going on. Told me I needed forgiveness in my life. I told her I had a really good place to shove forgiveness and that that was somewhere up her ass-”

Brett snorts helplessly. He shouldn’t laugh, but it’s funny, and Liam even smiles a little.

“Anyway, she told me that everything Dad did to me was "pre-emptive karmic retribution”,“ Liam says softly. "So there’s that.”

“Christ.” Brett can’t believe people like Liam’s mom exist. “Didn’t your stepdad-”

“They broke up.” He shrugs. “Guess she was feeling mean. Not the first time she’s taken it out on me.”

“She shouldn’t.”

Liam smiles wanly. The kettle clicks off. Brett pours them both a mug of chai tea and puts one in front of Liam, who leans forward, sniffs hesitantly, and wrinkles his nose.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Tea. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Coffee?”

“Like you need any more coffee. You’ve been mainlining so much of it from Starbucks you should be buying straight from their supplier.”

“Can’t afford it.” Liam drinks the tea, then splutters. “Hot!”

Brett shakes his head, smiles fondly, and leans over to swat Liam affectionately on the chin. “It’s boiling water, stupid.”

“Shut up,” Liam mumbles, dragging Brett’s mail towards him. “Avon? Seriously?”

“I need to work on my skincare routine.”

Liam stares at him for a moment, as if trying to work out how serious he is. Then his face splits into a smile and he laughs, and Brett almost forgets he was crying ten minutes ago.

~*~

Their sheets rustling wakes him up.

When he opens his eyes, the apartment is dark blue and cold; Liam is moving, slowly, evidently trying not to wake him. He always tries not to wake Brett, even after almost a year, even knowing that Brett can sense him leaving before he even begins to think about it.

He rolls, opens his eyes, and is welcomed back into consciousness with the sight of Liam’s thighs and waist at his eye level. Liam’s kneeling on the bed, slowly tugging the covers back up so no cold air seeps into the bed in his absence.

Brett reaches. “No,” he mumbles.

“I have to, Brett,” Liam says softly. “It’s been two weeks. I’ll be fine.”

“No,” Brett pleads, a little more vehemently this time.

Liam stands. The clock on the bedside table glows at him, soft green letters blurred by lingering sleep - 4:56. Early. A time that, before Liam’s donations, only existed in the shadowy half-reality of sleep. It’s a waking hour, now, and the reality of it re-settles into Brett’s bones slowly.

The moonlight slices away everything except Liam’s silhouette - the sharp, graceful cut of his hips, the lines denoting the muscular structure of his chest and arms, the way his thighs flex as he moves away from the bed and pulls a shirt on. Liam might be smaller than what he was, but he hasn’t wasted as much as he could have, and Brett’s struck suddenly by the idea that he’s known Liam for four years, almost five. He’s spent the majority of his adulthood carving out a tiny slice of the universe to exist in with Liam, and it’s going to have to be enough. He’s going to have to let it be enough.

“Come home,” he whispers.

Liam sits on the bed, uses one hand to brush through Brett’s hair. “Always do,” he says quietly.

~*~

The apartment door booms open.

Brett - who’s been eating cereal out of the box, lying back on the couch and channel-flipping for almost an hour - jumps so badly he almost loses his box of Lucky Charms. “Fuck,” he says, seeing Liam striding through. “You know, that security deposit is something I want back-”

It takes him approximately the length of that sentence to realise that Liam’s in a foul mood; he’s scowling, but his shoulders are hunched and his eyes down and he’s very determinedly not looking in Brett’s direction.

Brett thinks for a moment. He made Liam scrambled eggs this morning and dropped him at college - which means Liam took a bus or train to get back here - and kissed him goodbye, and Liam was smiling and making cracks about his taste in music. So he hasn’t done anything wrong, or if he has, he’s somehow done it in between deciding to eat Lucky Charms out of the box and settling on reruns of David Attenborough documentaries to watch.

He looks at his box of cereal, considering. Does Liam really like Lucky Charms enough to pitch a fit about Brett eating all the marshmallows?

The answer is no, probably not, and so Brett abandons his cereal and levers himself off the couch. “What’s up?” he asks.

Liam slams his keys down on the counter top. “I quit college,” he snaps, and promptly reaches into the fridge, grabs a beer, and cracks it open by twisting the cap with his t-shirt.

Brett opens his mouth, surprised, and then closes it. He knew Liam wasn’t enjoying it, but he figured it was normal sophomore blues - the time in which you realise you’re going to be dirt poor and anxious for at least another two years, and then stuck with insurmountable loans.

“You quit?” he asks carefully.

“Yeah.” Liam’s already downed half the bottle, and Brett wants to pry it out of his hands - an image of Liam downing his lithium and risperdal this morning flashes through his mind, closely followed by a list of all the horrible things that can happen to Liam’s liver if the alcohol and lithium interact badly.

Liam polishes off the bottle and throws it in the trash, then reaches for another one. Brett touches his arm, carefully, and - when Liam doesn’t flinch or jerk away or pin him with one of those withering, sardonic glares that could feasibly knock a few years off his life - wraps his fingers gently around Liam’s wrist.

“Why?” he asks softly.

“I hated it!” Liam says. “I’m fucking miserable!”

“Okay,” Brett replies easily. “How about… instead of having another beer, you talk to me? And if that doesn’t help, then have another.”

Liam sighs, relaxes a little, and closes the fridge. “Sorry about the door.”

“Don’t worry,” Brett says lightly. “I’m sure only one hinge is broken.”

Liam’s mouth twitches a little, but he doesn’t smile. He slides down into a chair at the counter, rubs his face, and sighs.

“I didn’t like it there, okay?” he asks softly. “I went to college because it was the only way for me to get away from my mom. But I don’t like school. I don’t like… paying attention, or deadlines, or… any of it. So I quit. And now I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“You’ll work it out,” Brett says. “I’m guessing the dorms are out if you’ve quit.”

“Yeah.”

“Good thing you have a key then,” Brett murmurs. “I’ll help you bring all your stuff over tonight if you want.”

Liam blinks. “You’re not angry?”

“Why would I be angry? If you don’t want to go to college, that’s your choice. I don’t love you because I think you’re going to be a high-flying barrister in four years.”

“I was studying environmental science, Brett,” Liam says helplessly.

“Yeah, you know, that might’ve been part of the problem,” Brett muses, eating a handful of Lucky Charms. “You seem like the kinda guy who needs to be doing something. Like, almost all the time. Environmental science isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that for you it seemed-”

“Fucking boring!” Liam leans back in his chair, tipping his face up. “Tree roots, Brett. My lecture this morning was about fucking tree roots.”

“Oh, man,” Brett says, trying to keep a straight face. “Not tree roots.”

Liam doesn’t seem to notice him trying not to laugh. “Now what?” he sighs dejectedly.

“We find you something not boring,” Brett reasons. “Something fun. Where you get to use your hands.” He tilts his head. “Why didn’t you tell me you were unhappy?” he asks gently.

Liam rubs his neck. “I thought you’d be disappointed,” he admits.

“Disappointed? Because you changed your mind? Never, baby.”

Liam nods, but he still looks put out. “Are there any Lucky Charms left?” he asks.

Brett looks into the box. “Regrettably, no.”

“Dude, that box was _full_ this morning,” Liam says, staring at Brett.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Oh well. Guess I’m going grocery shopping.”

~*~

The door opens at seven.

Brett blinks, looking up from his cereal.

“Liam?” he demands.

“Hi,” Liam says, walking in.

“What the fuck - you’ve only been gone two hours, what - you can’t have donated in-”

Liam sheds his coat. “They’re suing.”

Brett blinks. “Who are?”

“The involuntary donors are bringing a massive class-action lawsuit against every hospital, every doctor, and every nurse involved in collecting samples and researching Trapper,” Liam says quietly. “And until the lawsuit is settled, the doctors have to suspend their practice. Nobody’s donating, Brett.”

“Nobody?” he asks. “Not even volunteers?”

“Until the court can rule out coercion or blackmail, no one is allowed to donate,” Liam says, and sits down on the couch.

Brett tries to feel bad. Tries to remember that, for all the sick people - for all the susceptible people, like himself - this is bad news. A lawsuit barring the doctors from their research means no cure; no cure means more deaths.

But he can’t feel bad. The only feeling he’s experiencing is relief - so overwhelming it could bring him to his knees. Much like when they got their letters, revealing that Brett’s body was a breeding ground for the disease and Liam’s a fortress against it, the only thing he’s thinking about is Liam - and the fact that Liam won’t have to donate anymore.

“You…”

“Don’t be happy,” Liam murmurs. “Please. I’ve already… fuck, Brett, people are gonna die. A lot of people are gonna die.”

_But you won’t_ , Brett thinks. _You won’t, and that’s good_.

And he’s not sorry for that.

~*~

“I’m glad you didn’t have to donate,” Brett gasps.

“Don’t talk about that now,” Liam moans. “Harder.”

Liam built the bed and headboard sturdy, which is good, considering that right now if it was flat-pack IKEA furniture it would probably be in pieces or squeaking and ruining the mood. As it is, the headboard is good for hanging onto.

He curls over Liam’s back, trying to disguise the still-healing bruises in the middle-centre, caused by his donations. Brett doesn’t want to look at them. He wants to pretend everything is back to normal. They can fuck like they used to, not carefully or in-between sessions and-

“Um,” Liam whimpers, and he comes onto the sheets beneath them. Brett’s quick behind him, holds Liam’s waist and presses his thumbs into the peaks of his hipbones and savours Liam’s body trembling beneath him, around him.

He lowers Liam onto the bed carefully, away from the wet spot. He’s so gentle Liam turns to him and says, “I’m not made of glass, dude,” as he leans in for a messy kiss.

“Yeah,” Brett replies uncertainly.

Liam rolls onto his back and smiles. “Hmm, that was great.”

“Yeah,” Brett says again, and reaches for the remote. He flicks the TV on, surfs until he sees the news.

For a while, it’s standard stuff. Stock markets. How other countries are doing. Who’s killing who, as if Trapper isn’t wiping out enough people already without humans helping it along.

The news anchors begin to talk about Trapper, and then the lawsuit. Images of the sick and dying roll across the screen, closely followed by angry picketers outside a courthouse - the immune people, Brett surmises, made to look like the bad guys by a one-track media and majority opinion.

Liam tucks his face into Brett’s collarbone and breathes quietly, unnaturally controlled and even.

Brett waits until the news is over, then turns the TV off. For a moment, it’s silent.

“I wish they’d stop it,” Liam says.

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

Which doesn’t clear things up much. “It’s bad,” Brett agrees softly. “I don’t think… the involuntary donors aren’t wrong to protest. Just… if there was another way for the research to continue…”

Liam nods. “They aren’t bad people,” he whispers. “For not donating. I don’t blame them. Sometimes I regret starting.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. If it weren’t for you…” Liam shakes his head. “It’s so shit. 'Cause the government had donors, they had people, and if they hadn’t conscripted everyone into it and forced them to, we’d still be able to do research. And now it’s gonna get even further ahead of us.”

“Liam…”

“I know you’re glad,” Liam interrupts. “Alright? Let’s, you know, fuck the elephant in the room-”

“Let’s _not_ do that, or make references to doing that-”

“And just put it out there. You’re relieved about it a little. I knew you would be. But you love that I literally can’t go anymore. That they wouldn’t come five feet from me with a needle or a knife if I fuckin’ begged them.”

Brett looks him in the eye. “You’re right,” he says softly.

Liam closes his eyes, like he’s disappointed. “Brett, all those people-”

“I don’t care,” Brett says. “None of those people are worth the price of your life. Not one, not a hundred, not a thousand, not all of them. Not me, and not anyone else.”

“You’d let them all die?” Liam asks softly. “Just so I don’t have to?”

“Yes,” Brett says. “Because I’m selfish, and I even though I could probably live without you I don’t want to. So yes. I would.”

“What if that’s not what I wanted?” Liam asks.

“What are you talking about?” Brett gets up, walks to the kitchen. Liam swings out of bed and follows him, rolling grace and carelessness that’s so new, and yet so familiar, that it steals the air right out of Brett’s lungs.

“What if,” Liam says, cracking open a beer, “I’m the only one who can cure it. What if they told you there was a cure, and that it would definitely save everyone, but to get it I had to die?”

“I wouldn’t do it,” Brett murmurs.

Liam’s face grows stormy and irritated. “Why not?”

“Because,” Brett snaps, “then what? We survive Trapper, and two years later we’re obliterated in a nuclear blast when North Korea finally goes as apeshit as they’ve been promising to. We survive Trapper but global warming expedites the next Ice Age or continental drift and we all die frozen to the ground or by drowning, whichever happens first. We survive Trapper but our governments patent and copyright the cure so that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we enter a rat race of who has the most money to blow and let everyone else fall through the cracks.”

“They wouldn’t do that!” Liam protests.

“The fuck they wouldn’t!” Brett yells. “They conscripted hundreds of thousands of people to painfully donate every square inch of useful tissue they have! You think they wouldn’t use a cure as population control? You think it would reach everyone equally? Think again! You think people who don’t even have clean drinking water would be vaccinated? We couldn’t take care of our own when they were dying in droves on the street!”

“You think that little of people,” Liam says shakily.

“I think you’re the best person I’ve ever met,” Brett says, and his voice wobbles. “You have every reason to hate everyone and you don’t, you just - give and give and love and one day you’re gonna give too much and it’s going to end your life. Other people aren’t like you, Liam, they-”

“Sixty percent of the immune population is exactly like me,” Liam snaps. “Or did you forget about them?”

Honestly? He had. He doesn’t think outside the battles that rage inside Liam’s body and wounds; his only context for this war are the scenes he witnesses at home, whether it be Liam limping painfully to the fridge for a cold compress or curled around the toilet, vomiting until it’s tinged with blood.

“I’m not special,” Liam says. “Or different. I want everyone to live.”

“I want everyone to live too,” Brett says helplessly. He can’t pinpoint when this turned into a fight or when Liam started to look so fucking disappointed in him, but he wants it to end. “I agree-”

“You don’t,” Liam murmurs. “You think my life is worth more than millions of others.”

Brett grabs Liam before he can leave. “Liam,” he whispers. “It’s worth more to _me_. I told you I wouldn’t trade you for anything, once. And I meant it.”

“It seemed romantic then.” Liam looks tired.

“Liam,” Brett says, “this planet is unbelievably fucked. I don’t think we can come back from it. The planet’s dying. We’ve got another thousand years left before it gives up on us completely, and that’s if we don’t blow ourselves up first. And even though it’s shitty, I - I met you and I wanted to see it, all of it.”

Liam says nothing. His eyes are glossy, and he’s not trying to pull out of Brett’s grip anymore.

He gestures around them. “This is our home,” he whispers. “I wanted - we made this together, you know? Neither of us ever felt like we fit or belonged but when we moved in here we started carving out this tiny little existence together, and God, it’s so much more than I ever thought I’d have. And if we’re inevitably doomed to a slow, painful death of our own engineering, then I want to at least spend it with you.”

He swallows. Liam looks up at him wearily.

“I don’t want to - to spend it waiting for you to bleed so I can break out the bleach, because I just - I really fucking hate bleach, and I hate blood. I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t want to either,” Liam says. “But I also don’t want the human race to lie down with a sigh and accept its fate. That’s not what we do.”

“Maybe it should be, baby,” Brett murmurs. “Maybe our time’s up.” He rubs Liam’s arms. “You’ve been… so fucking brave,” he says, and his voice breaks. “But you can’t hold up the whole world. You can’t fix what came broken.”

A tear streaks down Liam’s cheek. “I can try,” he whispers, and his voice breaks pitifully over the last word. “I tried, Brett, I swear I did-”

Brett pulls him in, folds his arms around Liam until he’s a quivering mass in Brett’s chest and embrace, clinging to him like he’s drowning.

_Don’t let me go_ , Liam had said a few weeks ago. _I’m gonna fall._

Brett knows, now, what he felt like. Like the world is an illusion and the ground isn’t solid and the possibility of drifting into the seamless edge of space seems very real; like there’s nothing in his bones but grief and loss, and nothing in his soul but the knowledge that there’s nothing he can do to ease Liam’s pain.

~*~

The clock reads 3:07 in the morning.

Brett’s confused for a moment, isn’t sure why he’s awake. Then he hears a clatter in the kitchen.

His first thought? Burglars. His second? Protect Liam.

But when he rolls over, Liam isn’t next to him. The sheets are tossed back, and they’re damp and clammy - something’s wrong.

He moves. The sheets slide back and he lands on the floor, hearing another clatter in the kitchen - and now that he’s awake, properly, he can see that there are lights on and blazing across the apartment.

“Liam?” he asks.

The fridge door closes. Liam’s standing there, in boxers and a t-shirt, blinking at him. After a moment - during which he totally fails to acknowledge Brett - he leans forward, pressing his head against the stainless steel fridge.

“Liam?” Brett asks worriedly, padding over.

Liam licks his lips. “Hi,” he croaks out.

_He’s soaked_ , Brett realises with alarm. The shirt is clinging to him, visibly damp, and Liam’s hair is wet at the temples and the back of his neck.

He rests a hand on Liam’s back, eyebrows shooting up when he feels the heat radiating off Liam’s body. “Fuck, you’re burning up,” he murmurs.

Liam nods against the fridge.

“When did this happen?” Brett asks softly, trying to guide him away. “C'mon, you need to take some Tylenol and get back into bed.”

“Felt okay before bed,” Liam whispers, his voice rasping weakly from what sounds like a swollen, sore throat. “Swear.”

“Shh.” Brett pushes his hair back, touches his face and forehead. “I’m not mad. I just want you back in bed.”

“Getting the sheets dirty.”

“Doesn’t matter. You need to stay warm.” He hustles Liam into the bathroom, first, flicking the heat light on and wincing when Liam closes his eyes in protest. “Sorry, baby.”

He finds the Tylenol and starts punching them out of the packet; Liam shivers violently near the counter. Brett’s stomach does somersaults. He doesn’t know how to take care of a sick person. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Liam’s body feels like a furnace or that he’s visibly suffering.

_Thank God it’s a one off_ , he thinks, getting a glass of water and watching as Liam chokes down the pills. In the aftermath of swallowing them, he breathes heavily, leaning his hip against the counter.

“Come here,” Brett says softly, drawing him close with an arm around his shoulders. “Hmm.”

Liam leans on him. He’s damp and sweating still, shivering enough to power a wind turbine, and his forehead is hot like an oven against Brett’s collarbone. He’s not dying, but he is pretty sick. The flu or something, Brett’s not sure.

“Bed,” he murmurs. “Need anything else?”

“Hot,” Liam replies weakly.

“You’re shivering.”

“Dunno what to tell you.” Wince, swallow. “’M'hot.”

Brett rubs his back a little. “Listen,” he murmurs, “you really do need to keep warm, okay? I know you feel hot but it’s the only way to burn whatever this thing is out of you. So come back to bed. If you can’t sleep, we’ll watch TV.”

Liam nods against him, then pulls away to head for bed. And they don’t sleep; Liam tosses and turns for a bit, and they bicker about the covers and whether he needs them or not, but eventually he tires and lies still in the blankets Brett’s swaddled him with and they watch Desperate Housewives.

Brett doesn’t realise, but it’ll be practice.

~*~

Liam’s fever had broken after a day and a good hour of violent shakes preceding it, and two days later he was as healthy as a horse again.

Brett swallows. He’d thought at the time that that was the sickest he’d ever see Liam - down with some hell virus that worked fast and left him weak even after the fever had broken. But it wasn’t; it was only the start.

It was his first real experience of just how quickly things could go bad, how quickly someone can get sick; Liam had been fine the night before, maybe a little subdued, but not sick or feverish. Hours later, he was sicker, almost, than Brett had ever seen a person and awake at an hour that, until then, had been entirely theoretical to both of them.

Liam’s sitting on their bed. He’s not wearing socks, and Brett admires his toes - his toes, for crying out loud, and he’s not even a foot fetishist; he just really likes Liam, all of Liam, and he doesn’t get to see his feet or toes that often. Liam’s got surprisingly small feet, probably to match up with the rest of him, and well-muscled legs smattered with dark hair.

He’s got his guitar out. Brett hasn’t seen it in a while; Liam’s tongue is between his teeth, and he’s turning the knobs at the top of the neck carefully. Tuning it, effortlessly, with intuition only longtime players seem to have.

He goes to the kitchen. Starts making them some sandwiches and fries - Liam’s appetite is back, and Brett was thrilled just yesterday when Liam stepped on the bathroom scales and revealed a three pound weight gain. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but Liam’s been slowly but steadily losing over the last year, and Brett’s so relieved for the break he’s been thanking higher powers he doesn’t believe in.

Liam starts playing. The quiet, hollow sound of open chords floats through the apartment and winds around Brett’s senses, soothing him. Liam’s a good player, and after only two pauses and one off-sounding note, he slips seamlessly into playing properly.

Brett doesn’t recognise the song. Although, maybe it’s supposed to have other instruments and Liam’s playing the acoustic version; maybe it’s supposed to have a capo, be tuned differently, or have the melody played instead of the chords. Still, it sounds right to him, somehow; probably because Liam’s the one playing.

_“I felt a break in a sacred place where your hands don’t heal  
These are the reasons you’re ruled by the things you feel…”_

Brett tries to keep his hands moving. Liam rarely sings - even now, he’s shy about it and stubbornly insists he’s no good, but Brett thinks otherwise. Brett always has a different opinion on Liam’s self-perceived shortcomings.

_“I felt you escape into empty space where my heart can’t feel  
Down in the darkness, you met all the things you feared…”_

He’s not sure he likes this song. Something about it - about the haunting strings, the lilting, soft way Liam’s pronouncing the words, has him feeling edgy and sad.

Liam looks up at him. Before Brett can pretend to be busy, their eyes lock; Liam knows he’s listening. Maybe that’s why he chose the song he did.

_“And I knew  
I knew there was nothing I could do.”_

His eyes burn. He turns away - to stack the lettuce neatly on top of the bread slices, so neatly it’s almost a perfect square; to layer down some dressing, and then put on the chicken, bacon, and tomato. Liam keeps playing, and when Brett risks turning around, he’s not watching anymore.

He feels shaken. This is not what he expected when Liam finally picked up his guitar again; okay, he wasn’t expecting anything particularly happy to come out of it, because Liam’s never liked that kind of peppy upbeat music before anyway, but this? This is on a whole other level.

_"You can't escape forever, mistaking smoke for heaven's light_  
It's not follow or a fade to black, and white  
Oh I could take you home  
Pretend the best's still ahead  
Maybe in the sun you'll see  
You got what you want  
But not what you need." 

His butter knife clatters to the ground; Liam’s fingers slip along the steel strings, rendering the echoing note useless and bringing total silence to their apartment.

“Stop,” Brett says shakily.

“Why?” Liam’s eyes are fixed on him; he knows why, but he wants to hear Brett say it.

For once, Brett can’t give him what he wants. He’s always been able to, before, but those times were different - he can fuck harder or give Liam double bacon or change the channel or squeeze him tight to keep him warm, but those things aren’t this. _This_ is different; this is why their line in the sand exists, because Brett thinks things Liam doesn’t really want to know and Liam makes decisions Brett can’t live with.

“Lunch is ready,” Brett says, and Liam says nothing to the contrary when he ambles over and sees the sandwiches, split open and half-made, or the fries, which are burned.


	4. Suture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol i almost forgot to update this
> 
> this is the final chapter! thank you to everyone who left comments and likes <3 
> 
> maybe one day i will finish more than one project
> 
> today is not that day but it's a start!

**Suture: the fine thread or other material used surgically to close a wound or joint tissues.**

~*~

Liam’s sleeping.

Brett’s lying awake, staring at the ceiling, with Liam’s words swirling around in his mind like an accusation. Or maybe a lesson. Either way, he can’t drown them out.

He rolls over. Liam’s facing away from him, and Brett can see the tattoo on his side - an uncharacteristically feminine looking rose that crawls up his ribs and ends below his armpit. It’s distinct from the others - the others are black and white, traditional looking, masculine. The rose is delicate, despite its size.

Brett wonders what inspired it.

“Maybe you’re right,” Brett says aloud. Liam doesn’t move. “Maybe I don’t know what I need.”

Liam breathes out. The flower shifts, unfurls.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Brett murmurs.

~*~

When he dreams, he sees sand. Miles and miles of golden-white sand and ocean crests, foaming white and the colour of Liam’s eyes, booming against rocks the colour of the night sky.

The beach. He’s never been. It’s too far and too strange and they don’t have time and-

Liam barrels past him, straight into the waves, yelling with glee. They’re the only ones on the beach, and Liam’s light and life fills the entire scene, bleeds into every imagined atom and makes it glow.

If this is love, it’s the most painfully visceral thing Brett’s ever felt.

Liam turns. He’s saying something, but the sound of the ocean drowns out his words, and in the next moment, he’s swallowed in a geyser of sea spray.

That’s when Brett remembers he can’t swim.

~*~

With Trapper research - and Liam’s donations - at a total standstill, their life returns, somewhat, to normal.

There are still parts missing. Like late-night adventures to the overpriced corner store for junk food, or night runs after they feel guilty for the junk food, or just going out to see movies. They can’t do things now, not like they used to.

One morning, Brett wakes up to find Liam on the treadmill, three miles deep into a run and pouring buckets of sweat.

He gets up, pads over, and blinks. “Hot,” he says sleepily.

Liam grins, but doesn’t say anything - he’s panting breathlessly. Brett watches him for a moment - the steady flash of his feet on the moving belt of the treadmill, his hair bouncing, his shoulders pinned back but arms relaxed and moving.

Eventually, he goes and gets breakfast. For a moment - a single moment, suspended in an odd not-quite reality of Brett’s own making - he forgets. About donations, about not going outside, about Trapper - about everything. In that moment, the clock has rewound a year and Liam’s running on the treadmill to burn off excess energy and Brett’s making them breakfast, and later they’ll walk down to Starbucks and get coffee.

Then he turns to open the fridge - he’s going to make Liam French toast and bacon and eggs and coffee the way he likes it and watch him eat it all - he catches sight of it: the piece of paper detailing Liam’s bad reaction to his latest donation.

Reality crashes back in, a rock through the window of his spun glass house, and he stops. Stares for a moment, at the medical terminology and the systemic breakdown of the parts that make Liam a whole, and his head fills with white noise.

“Brett?” Liam pants.

He jumps. Liam’s at his elbow, breathing hard and sweating and stinking up the kitchen.

“Huh?” Brett asks.

Liam wrinkles his nose. “You’ve been standin’ here for five minutes,” he says. “Gonna let the cold out of the fridge.” With that, he reaches past Brett’s chest and shuts it firmly. “I’m gonna shower.”

Brett stands for a moment. Then he follows - by the time he strips down, Liam’s already under the spray, hair wet and slicked back and his face tilted to the spray.

Brett closes the sliding door behind him. Liam opens his eyes and looks, and Brett looks right back - at the myriad of scars and marks that pepper Liam’s body like impact craters, wars on the continent of his body Brett didn’t get to fight in.

He can tell the difference, now. Between the old marks from Liam’s childhood, slightly sunken silvery gleams against the light gold backdrop of his skin, compared to newer ones - ones that are red and welted and still looking like they have stories to tell. The old ones are done; there’s nothing left there that Brett doesn’t know.

“Don’t look at those,” Liam says.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to look at me and see scars,” Liam murmurs. “I want you to look at me and see me.”

Can he do that, though? Can he separate Liam from the donations and Trapper and all the awful nights they’ve spent curled on towels in the bathroom, nursing Liam’s various wounds and then some? Can he look at Liam - healthy, now - and not see his immunity and sacrifice?

Liam steps forward and holds him. His hips are sharp, sharper than they used to be, but his hands still feel the same, warm and strong and callused on the back of Brett’s neck, where they hold and stroke.

Liam was Liam before all this. And maybe it’s inevitable that the Liam Brett met is gone, somewhere - not quite where he used to be in the ways he used to be; changed, irrevocably, by circumstance. But that would’ve happened anyway, because they’re growing. Liam was eighteen when they met and now he’s almost twenty three. Five years is a big chunk of time when you’re just starting out.

“I love you,” Brett says. “I’m gonna love you till the day I die.”

~*~

**From** : Dunbae, 11:12PM  
Where r u

Brett blinks blearily at his phone; the words blur together, and it takes him a long moment to make out Liam’s nickname.

**To** : Dunbae, 11:13PM  
Batromm

He doesn’t have to wait long. The door opens, and Liam’s standing in the doorway, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and looking hot as hell with his hair pushed back and a watch wrapped around his wrist. Brett looks up at him dopily.

Liam sighs. “You’re drunk.”

“Only this much,” Brett mumbles, holding his hands about a foot apart.

“Right.” Liam steps inside, sticks a cup under the faucet, and fills it, passes it to Brett. “Drink.”

“Vodka?” he asks stupidly.

“No more vodka, dude, you’re halfway to embalmed already.” Liam helps him drink - water, Brett recognises now - and then stands again. “C'mon. Fresh air.”

Brett isn’t so drunk he can’t walk; he follows Liam out, admiring his jaw line when he turns to check Brett’s still there.

They walk for a while. Liam stays close, not saying anything and looking up at the night sky; he seems happy enough to be out here, and Brett feels about the same.

It’s been a shit night, it’s true. Lots of weird things happening, bad things, things Brett doesn’t like to deal with at the best of times. But right now, he’s wandering along a suburban footpath with Liam at his side, and life feels okay.

They make two circles of the block before they’re back at the house, and therefore the party; Liam slips around the back instead of going in, finding a quiet spot in the yard to dig in his pockets. Brett watches as he leans against the side of the house, puts the cigarette to his mouth, and flicks his lighter. The little burst of flame leaves an imprint on Brett’s retinas, and the next he knows, the end of the cigarette has turned to embers and Liam’s puffing out slow, lazy circles of smoke.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” he says.

Liam shrugs. “You shouldn’t drink.”

He’s right. “Thanks,” Brett murmurs. “For coming out here. Sorry to waste your night-”

“Nah, man.” Liam shrugs. “Tomorrow it’ll be my trauma and we’ll be back here again. Don’t sweat it.”

“I wish it was just mine,” Brett says. “And that you didn’t have any. Seems like you could use a break.” He’s not as drunk, now, but his tongue is loose and his emotions are roaming freely, not tempered by his desire to seem only just as involved as Liam.

Liam looks at him for a long, silent moment. The cigarette in his fingers smokes and crisps and burns, until it’s almost touching his skin.

“Why not?” he asks.

Brett blinks. He thinks, for a moment, that Liam’s talking about Brett’s earlier comment about needing a break - soon enough, when the embers in the cigarette burst to life with Liam’s drag, he realises he’s talking about smoking.

“It’ll kill you,” Brett says dumbly.

Liam tilts his head, considering him for a moment. Brett watches the cigarette blurrily, then the smoke when it puffs out from Liam’s parted lips, like a dream.

Liam drops the cigarette and stamps it out. “C'mon,” he says.

“Where?”

“Starbucks. I’ll buy you a coffee or somethin’.”

Brett watches him as they walk. He’s seen Liam naked - seen him spread out and writhing in ecstasy and knows the minutia of his existence, like the rise of his ribcage right before he moans his way through an orgasm, or how he looks when he sleeps, still and relaxed apart from his fingers, which always twitch. He knows Liam; he’s fucked him and been fucked by him and recorded, in the back of his head, every detail of those exchanges until their coming together is more of a performance than anything else.

But he doesn’t know Liam inside. Doesn’t know what makes him tick, really; what causes him to be so removed, so carefully and calmly removed, but still leave the impression that he’s involved, or why he’s taking Brett for coffee. He doesn’t know. Maybe he never will. Maybe Liam doesn’t want him to.

“I don’t really know you,” he says.

Liam doesn’t look at him. “Sure you do.”

“No. I know you like COD and that you like bread and that you curl your toes when you come, but I don’t know you.”

Liam sighs. “Look, it’s deliberate, okay? And I’m only telling you because you’re drunk and you look sad, but you’re better off not knowing me. There’s some fucked up shit in my head I don’t even deal with, I’m not forcing it on anyone else.”

Brett pulls his wrist, gets him to turn, and kisses him gently. Liam’s kind of still underneath him, unsure; they haven’t kissed like this before, with care instead of passion.

“I wanna know you,” Brett mumbles. “Please let me in.”

Liam’s face, when Brett sees it next, is full of regret. “I don’t know if I can.”

Brett’s eyes sting. “Okay,” he whispers.

~*~

“When will it start again?”

Brett looks to the side. Liam’s lying on the bed, turning his Garrus Vakarian figurine idly in his fingers.

“The donations?”

“Yeah,” Liam says. “When do you think I can go back?”

_Hopefully never_ , Brett thinks, even as he says, “It depends on the court process really. What they’re charged with, whether they plead guilty, conditions…”

Liam sighs. “Long time?”

“If ever.” He rolls. “How come the voluntary donors can’t donate?”

“Something about financial compensation and coercion,” Liam mumbles moodily. “Man, I… I get where all those conscripted people are coming from, I do. But… they pretty much condemned everyone else to death and I’m not okay with that.”

“No?”

“No. Should I be?”

“No,” Brett says, even as he thinks, _but nobody would blame you if you were._

~*~

“So what’s wrong with it?” Brett asks.

Liam straightens a little, one hand on the popped hood of Brett’s car. “You want the long version or the short version?” he asks.

“Uh… the one that tells me what’s wrong with it?”

“Right.” Liam sighs, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “Look, your fuel pump has gone to shit, the drive belt looks like it’s about to crumble to pieces, and your spark plug is… well, it’s shit, dude. Plus your gears grind like an eighty year old’s arthritic knees, and-”

“What does all that mean?” Brett asks.

“Look,” Liam says, “I can fix all of this with new parts. But basically, your car’s fucked, dude.”

Brett sighs. “How fucked?”

Liam squints. “What, you want a rating from one to ten?”

“Yeah, actually, that’d help. I don’t understand anything you just said. Too high tech for me.”

“Guess you can’t be good at everything,” Liam sighs. “A six or seven. It’s gonna cost money for the parts, but if you’re happy for me to fix it, you can save on mechanic fees.”

“You’d fix it?” Brett asks hopefully.

“Sure.”

“I can’t pay you.”

“Buy me a pizza and a six pack and we’ll call it even.”

And so that’s what he does. Liam gets to work - goes to the auto shop while Brett buys pizza and beer - and they meet back at his car, where Liam is under the hood and cursing cheerfully at all the tiny parts.

“I shouldn’t buy you booze,” Brett says when Liam cracks open a third bottle. “You’re underage and on psych meds.”

Liam waves his hand and scoffs. “You aren’t the first, won’t be the last. And fuck’s sake, don’t worry about the psych meds, okay? They’re to make me not crazy.”

“You aren’t crazy,” Brett says. “You have a mental illness. Not the same thing.”

Liam blinks, looks up at him for a moment. Then he goes back under the hood of the car, and Brett sighs.

“I was eleven,” Liam says.

“Hmm?”

“When I was diagnosed with IED. I was eleven. Fifteen when I got diagnosed with anxiety. My parents always told me I was crazy, that my brain doesn’t work because I wasn’t supposed to be born and karma knew that.”

“Jesus,” Brett says, shocked.

“Mm.” Liam shrugs. “I grew up hearing crazy. It’s hard to forget.”

“You aren’t,” Brett says. “Crazy, I mean. You’re hotheaded and stubborn and stupidly smart, but you aren’t crazy.”

“I’m not smart.”

“Yeah you are. So you can’t do math. So science doesn’t make you wet yourself with excitement. So what? You know how to make things, and take them apart, and put them back together and fix them. You’re smart.”

Liam stops working for a moment. The air goes silent.

“Never thought of it that way,” Liam says roughly.

“Practical smart,” Brett says, smiling. “I like you for that.”

“You like me?” Liam seems honestly surprised.

“Yeah,” Brett replies, bemused.

“Huh. I thought you were just sticking around ‘cause we were fucking.”

_What did they do to you?_ Brett wonders, watching Liam work. _What the hell did they do to you that you think your only worth is in being a good lay?_

“I like you,” he says. “Even if we stopped having sex I’d still like you.”

“What if I stopped fixing your car?”

“Still like you. Be sad about the mechanic fees, but…”

Liam emerges from under the hood and sits next to him, putting his beer down and reaching for a slice of pizza with grease-stained hands. He smiles as he picks it up. “Good thing for you,” he says, “I’m almost done.”

“I’ll take you to a movie,” Brett offers.

“A movie?” Liam’s still smiling, but it’s closed off and sad. “We don’t do movies.”

“We do now.” Brett stretches. “What do you wanna see?”

Just like that, Liam lights up. We don’t do movies, he’d said, but now that Brett’s making it a thing, he looks happy and eager, and his spine is straight and he’s leaning forward into Brett’s space.

“That new one. Based off the comic book? Uh…”

“Saga?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Holy shit,” Brett says, surprised. “You’re a total nerd, aren’t you?”

Liam smiles shyly. “Mm. A little.” He perks up a little. “I always hide them, but - I have a Garrus Vakarian and Commander Shepard vintage action figures in my dorm room. I always hide them when you come over.”

“What?” Brett laughs. “You shouldn’t. That’s awesome.”

“Really?”

“You’re full of little surprises. You’re never what I’m expecting. I like that about you.”

Liam smiles widely. “Really?” he asks again.

“I think you’re great,” Brett says sincerely.

“Yeah,” Liam mumbles shyly. “You aren’t that bad.”

Brett laughs.

~*~

“You remember how long it took me to convince you to see a movie?”

Liam stirs weakly against him. Brett tries to ignore the small, wounded noise he makes - tucks Liam’s head protectively closer to his chest, staring down at his eyelashes.

“Liam?” he prompts.

Liam’s tongue darts out across his lips. “Mhm?” he asks, voice croaking and weak.

“The first time I asked you to see a movie with me,” Brett says. “It took you forever to agree. More than a month I think.”

A long pause. Liam shifts, catches his breath, and relaxes. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Wasted… time.”

“No,” Brett says quickly. “Just meant I knew you really wanted to when you finally said yes.” He’s nervous; Liam’s breathing is fluttery and light, as if he’s struggling. “Are you breathing okay? Do you need-”

A subtle shake of the head, and this is what the first day back at donations looks like.

~*~

He calls the doctor.

By the time she arrives, Liam’s sleeping, albeit restlessly. He’s curled into the couch with a soft cushion supporting his shoulder, and he stirs faintly when she approaches him.

“How long has it been?” she asks softly.

“Oh, uh, a day,” Brett says, so wrapped up in feeling anxious and scared that he has trouble getting a response out. “He-”

“I meant since the last time he donated.”

“Oh. Two months. After the lawsuit-”

“Right, of course.” She puts her hand against Liam’s forehead; he twitches, but doesn’t wake. “He’s not feverish.”

“He just seems so-”

“Sick?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s probably a shock to the system,” she murmurs, “going from what you said was a healthy exercise routine, straight back to donations.”

“I’m right here,” Liam’s voice mumbles from the cushions. “I can hear you talking about me. I’m not dead.”

Adi raises her eyebrow, but smiles. “Sounds like he’s fine.”

“I am. Brett’s a pathological worrier.”

“Where did you learn the word pathological?” Brett asks.

Liam cracks an eye open and levels him with a glare that’s only half-joking. “From you, probably, asshole.”

Adi checks Liam over, including his wound and dressing, and then follows Brett into the kitchen. Within a few minutes, Liam’s dropped off into sleep, and Brett turns to her, dropping the stilted small-talk they’ve been making.

“Level with me here,” he murmurs. “How’s he doing?”

She looks at him sadly. “He can’t keep doing this, Brett. It’s too much strain. You’re going to notice him bounce back less and less from the procedures. If he doesn’t stop-”

“He’ll die,” Brett says softly.

She nods, hesitates, and then speaks again. “Brett,” she murmurs, “there’s something you need to know.”

“About?”

“The procedures. Why they take so much.”

He blinks. “Okay.”

She clasps her hands together, closes her eyes, and looks remarkably like she’s praying. “There’s no easy way to say this,” she says. “And it’s meant to be confidential information - the lawsuit, the reason that it was settled out of court-”

“What?” he demands.

“They’re cloning the donors,” she says. “Including Liam.”

His head spins momentarily. “They’re-”

“Cloning the donors,” she repeats. “I don’t know when they got the technology but that’s what’s been happening. The doctors and officials settled the lawsuit out of court because they couldn’t afford to have anyone look into the matter any more deeply.”

“Cloning?” Brett’s totally freaked. “So there are more of Liam? But they’re just - empty shells, right? It's - it's not him in there, is it? It isn't-”

“Until they serve a purpose, yes,” she murmurs. “Having said that, the clones are designed fully-grown-”

“We don’t have the technology to do this!” he says loudly, and Liam stirs on the couch.

“The tech has probably been in development for years,” she says quietly. “This just gave them a reason to perfect it, and it’s not like they have a shortage of tissue to work with. Listen, the only reason I tell you is - is they’ve started… sending clones home, in place of the originals.”

“What?” Brett yells.

Liam jerks on the couch, gasps, and whimpers before trying to sit up, breathing heavily with surprise. Brett’s gut lurches, and the anger is forgotten as he goes over.

“Brett?” Liam pants. “What’s-”

“Nothing, nothing, I’m sorry.” He coaxes Liam back down. “Go to sleep, okay?”

When Liam’s back asleep - it doesn’t take long - he turns to Adi. “They’re fucking what now?” he hisses.

“Clones.” She’s got her arms wrapped around herself. “For all intents and purposes the clones sent home are exactly the same as the originals - no differences. Even their memories… somehow, even their memories are intact. Except they don’t know they’re clones.”

“They don’t know?” Brett fists his hair. “How the hell is this even possible?”

“I don’t know.” She looks scared, he realises, and helpless. “The only reason I know is because I’m on the inside. There’s meant to be a mark - a sign that they’re clones, somewhere, on their bodies. But I haven’t figured out where yet.”

Brett turns to stare at Liam. The tattoo on his lower arm shifts as he breathes.

“He can’t be a clone,” he says. “His tattoos-”

“I don’t think he is,” she responds. “Has there ever been a time where he was hospitalised overnight? That was unusual?”

And Brett blanks. For a moment, he feels safe - Liam’s never needed hospitalisation, he’s always come home.

Except.

_“Something went wrong.” He’s been crying; Brett can hear it in his voice. “I can’t come home today. I have to stay here.”_

_“What?” Brett demands shakily. “You have to-”_

_“I can’t-” Liam sounds like he’s choking down a sob. “I can’t, um, really walk. I just - I can’t come home, okay? I have to stay here. For tonight. Maybe tomorrow night as well.”_

“Yeah,” Brett whispers. “But he wasn’t - he called, he hadn’t been unconscious, he-”

He looks at the couch again. Liam sleeps. He looks normal. Like Liam. Not a hair out of place or suspicious.

“He can’t be,” he says blankly. “I stayed on the phone with him all night. I listened to him breathe. They can’t have done anything to him-”

“That might not mean much,” she says quietly. “Sometimes they’re anaesthetised for the procedures. Do you remember what he had done? Whether he was put to sleep for it?”

“It was his shoulder.” Brett remembers that much. “Wait - I have the paperwork here somewhere-”

He finds it in the filing cabinet, going by date - a filing cabinet almost totally filled with medical reports, details of Liam’s donations that have all blurred into one painful pool of information in Brett’s head, deep and dark enough that it’s useless to him.

“He wasn’t put under,” he murmurs, fingers shaking with relief. “He did pass out though, for an hour or so - they had to move him to recovery pretty fast.”

Adi nods. She still looks scared - broken, like a doctor who took the Hippocratic oath and meant it, only to find that the system her practice is based upon is cracked and broken.

“Please tell me he’s not a clone,” Brett moans, his voice breaking.

“Would it matter if he was? He’s Liam. The clones are the people they came from in every way that counts. Would you not love him the same?”

“Of course I’d love him the same,” Brett whispers. “I’d love him no matter what he looked like or where he’d come from. I’ll always love him. But if that’s a clone, that means the real Liam died on an operating table and I didn’t even fucking notice and I wasn’t there.”

He doesn’t want to think about it. The hospital, with its lack of privacy and curtains, filled with the souls of the dead and the dying - and the brave, like Liam, donating their very life source in the vague hope that it may help. He doesn’t want to think of the anaesthesia, of Liam’s eyes closing, of the ever-weakening beat of his heart.

_Liam might die,_ he realises, heart in his throat. _And if he does, he’ll die alone._

There’s silence for a moment. Liam stirs on the couch, yawns a little.

“Still here?” he asks Adi, voice rough with sleep. “Do I look that bad?”

She smiles. “No. Brett and I were just talking.” She picks up her things. “I’d better go,” she murmurs. “Another appointment. Be safe.”

“You too,” Brett says, and watches as she leaves. When the door closes behind her, he turns to Liam.

Liam licks his lips. “Do I smell bad or somethin’?” he asks.

It’s so very Liam that Brett laughs, and it sounds wrong to his ears, mirthless. Even Liam’s eyebrows tilt concernedly.

“You don’t smell,” he says, coming over and sitting on the couch next to Liam’s hip. “Want a bath?”

“Hmm, with bubbles,” Liam replies sleepily. “Hot bath with bubbles.”

“Should I get some rubber ducks?”

“Fuck you, man, rubber duckies are the shit.”

Brett doesn’t look for a mark as he helps Liam to the bathroom. He doesn’t look for a mark as he helps Liam peel out of his clothes, and he doesn’t look for a mark as he sits next to the tub, watching Liam goof off with the stupid amount of bubbles in the tub.

“Would be better with ducks,” Liam yawns.

“I’ll get you some fucking ducks, then.”

He doesn’t look for a mark as he helps Liam out, or gets him dressed again, or gets him into bed. He doesn’t even look when Liam’s asleep and Brett has the opportunity to stare without getting caught.

He’s not sure if he doesn’t look because it doesn’t matter, or because he doesn’t want to know.

~*~

Summer floats in like a petal across a lake.

Brett’s cooped up in his dorm room when he looks to the side, catches sight of the lacrosse team photo. Liam’s at the front - because he’s short - and he’s grinning, holding up his stick and showing every single one of his absurdly sharp teeth.

Brett’s hand plays at his boxers. His roommate isn’t here.

He grabs his phone, hesitates for a moment. He’s got Liam’s number - he’s got all the players’ numbers - but he’s not sure if he should use it for this.

His dick wins over his brain, though - as is sadly the case most of the time - and he pulls up Liam’s name. He can’t get the guy out of his head - the sex, more specifically, which had been a fantastic end to a horrible dry spell. Liam didn’t act weird afterwards, and they’ve managed to get along fine on the lacrosse field since.

_I can handle hook ups_ , Brett promises himself. _If I don’t expect anything it’ll be fine._

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 9:43PM  
What’s up?

He’s surprised when his phone pings almost immediately.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 9:43PM  
Nm study u

Brett screws his face up. He hasn’t been confronted with actual textspeak since he was twelve and using it himself.

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 9:44PM  
Nothing. Bored. Wanna come over?

Three bubbles appear, then disappear, then appear again, followed by a text.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 9:44PM  
Lol this b/c? B)

Brett stares at the text. He’s got absolutely no fucking idea what any of that means - Liam’s omitted punctuation, syntax and even words from his text. He doesn’t even know what the emoji is.

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 9:45PM  
What did you just say? :/

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 9:45PM  
Lol is this a booty call  
Cuz I’m cool w/that

Brett grins to himself. Liam initiated the last one; of course he’s cool with it.

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 9:45PM  
Yeah it’s a booty call. Are you coming

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 9:45PM  
Will b lmao  
Told u

Brett frowns at his phone.

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 9:46PM  
Told me what?

It’s five minutes later that he gets the text back; Liam’s probably halfway across campus now, if he left right away.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 9:51PM  
That u would fall in love w/me  
Lol

Brett doesn’t get the chance to reply; there’s a knock on his door, and he opens it to find Liam, looking sinfully hot in a white tank top and sweats.

Liam grins. His teeth look sharper in person. “Hi,” he says. “You’re lucky I’m not old fashioned. Or I’d be demanding dinner and a movie first.”

Brett grins. “Maybe that’s what I like about you.” Liam’s here willingly and he steps into Brett’s space, and Brett knows Liam wants this - he’s half hard against Brett’s thigh already, and Brett has no problem with manhandling him onto the bed.

“What are you gonna do to me?” Liam asks innocently. Brett can see the corner of a grin on his face.

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard you can’t say anything except my name,” Brett says, pushing him until he rolls over. He’s flushed, seemingly having lost the edge of humour - and the upper hand - in their exchange, and Brett hears him pant a little.

“That hard?” Liam breathes.

“That hard,” Brett confirms, reaching into his side table. “What else did you think I was gonna do when you came here?”

“Honestly? I was hoping exactly that.”

But it doesn’t really work out that way; sure, Brett ends up with his dick snug inside Liam - but Liam’s on top, riding him so perfectly that really, Brett’s the one getting fucked.

He puts his hands on Liam’s thighs - they’re rock solid under his hands, smattered with dark blonde hair, and runs his fingers up to grab Liam’s hips, hold him still, and begins to pound him from underneath.

Liam leans into his neck, supports himself on his elbows, and outright whimpers into the junction of Brett’s throat and shoulder. “There,” he moans. “Keep going, keep going, ’m gonna come-”

“Say my name,” Brett pants.

Liam looks him in the eye then - heated, nowhere near submissive, and says, “Brett,” like it’s a plea.

Brett pumps into him - three more times, and Liam gasps, cries out, and comes between them, onto Brett’s stomach, slowing in his rocking movements soon afterwards. Brett follows him right over the edge, holding the back of Liam’s neck and his right hip, groaning as he shudders his way through orgasm.

For a moment, they sit like that. Liam’s breathing so hard against his neck that condensation might be forming there. He’s shaking.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and sits up. Brett takes him in - wild hair, bright cheeks and eyes, a flush working its way from his neck right to his ears. He looks fucking beautiful.

“Hey,” Brett says faintly, and Liam laughs breathlessly, then begins to ease himself off Brett, wincing a little as he allows Brett to slip free.

“You alright?” Brett asks.

“Yep, fine.” Liam rolls to the edge of the bed. “Got a towel? Tissues?”

“Tissues, across the room.” Brett gestures.

Liam’s up and moving - gingerly, Brett notes with some level of satisfaction - and grabs some tissues before heading back to him.

Brett cleans himself up; Liam’s on his phone, not even bothering to get dressed. Brett watches him for a moment.

“What time is it?” he asks.

As if on cue, Liam lets out a jaw-breaking yawn. “Almost eleven,” he says. “Fuck, we have practice tomorrow.”

“Stay then,” Brett says.

Liam raises an eyebrow. “Thought this was a booty call?”

“It is, but I’m the captain, and as the captain I can’t afford to have you off your game tomorrow.”

“Might be a little late for that,” Liam says, winking, but he sinks back down on the mattress next to Brett as Brett laughs.

For a moment, there’s silence. It’s too hot, and Brett’s skin prickles where Liam’s close to him, and Liam’s breathing softly but noticeably. Different ambient sound from Brett’s often-absent roommate, that’s for sure.

“You text like a douchebag,” Brett says.

He’s rewarded with a lightning-fast elbow to his ribs. “Do fuckin’ not.”

“Yes you do. I didn’t understand half of what you said.”

“I don’t like texting,” Liam grumbles. “Sue me.”

“How come?”

“Can’t tell how people feel over text. People say shit they don’t mean all the time, but you can tell if you can hear them speak. Text? No way.”

Brett nods thoughtfully. He’s got a point there.

“I’ll call you next time,” he says, and Liam laughs. “Not that I think there was anything particularly confusing about what I wanted.”

“Maybe you needed to study,” Liam says innocently. “Maybe you needed help.”

“Right. What do you even take?”

“Environmental science,” Liam says, and Brett only knows he’s serious because he’s completely straight faced.

“Oh.” He’s trying not to laugh. “I kind of pegged you for…”

“… Literally anything else?”

“Yeah,” Brett admits, and Liam laughs, warming him through to his core.

~*~

Two weeks later, Brett catches Liam getting up at five in the morning.

This morning is gonna be different. He’s not going to let Liam slink away. This morning, he gets up with him.

Liam eyes him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Brett says innocently.

“I don’t believe you,” Liam mutters, going to the fridge. Brett follows, and, as he goes, snags Liam’s keys out of the bowl on the countertop.

Liam hears them jangle, turns around. “Gimme my keys.”

“No,” Brett says simply. “You aren’t going.”

Liam stares at him disbelievingly for a moment - and then the anger settles in. He slams the fridge - Brett has to suppress a flinch at that; angry Liam isn’t something he likes to see - and strides towards him.

“I’m not fucking around,” Liam snaps. “Give me my goddamn keys.”

“I wasn’t fucking around either,” Brett replies, jerking them out of reach. “You aren’t going. That’s it. That was your last one.”

“Brett, I swear to fucking god-”

“Swear to all the higher deities you want, you atheist prick-” And at this, Liam visibly splutters, unable to believe Brett’s actually chosen to focus on that in their argument - “but I’m not letting you out. You’ll have to fucking fight me for them.”

Liam glares. “I’m not fighting you.”

“Oh, good, so you agree? That you’re going to stay and not be the dummy in a fucked up game of Operation, Operation, Who’s Got The Magic Stem Cells?”

“You’re such a fucking drama queen! You make it sound like they’re torturing me!”

“They’re turning you into Swiss fucking cheese!” Brett yells. “I’m sorry if I value your life more than you do!”

“I hate you,” Liam snarls.

“Fine!” Brett yells. “Go ahead and fucking hate me! I don’t care! At least you’ll be alive to do it!”

They glare at each other. Liam looks like he’s squaring up for a fight - fuck, when has Liam ever not squared up for a fight? When has he ever let anything go? When has he ever known to just fucking quit while he’s ahead?

“One time,” Brett says, softening his voice, “I said to you that I would let the whole world die if it meant you didn’t have to. That I’d choose you over everyone. Remember what you said?”

“That it seemed romantic at the time,” Liam mutters.

“Right.” Brett nods. “Now I’m gonna ask you something. Would you let the whole world die to save me?”

Liam looks up, stricken, then uncomfortable. “That’s not… that’s not the kind of situation we’re in,” he protests weakly.

“No, it’s a hypothetical, and-” and Brett tries so hard not to melt when Liam’s nose does that cute little scrunching thing, that twitch that means he didn’t quite understand something Brett said - “and I want you to answer it. Would you let the whole world burn if it meant I got to live?”

To his surprise, Liam doesn’t hesitate. “Of course I would,” he moans, and he takes a step forward and fists the hem of Brett’s t-shirt into his hands, pulls. “You’re all I’ve ever had.” He shakes his head when Brett opens his mouth. “But you don’t - you don’t understand. That’s why I’m doing this now. That’s why I’ve always done it. Wouldn’t you?”

Just like that, the tables have turned. Because Liam’s right. He would. He’s not just the person who would let the whole world crumble to dust if it meant the one person he loves more than anything got to live - he’s also the one who, if he’d been given the opportunity, would sacrifice everything he had and then some to make sure that person got even a snowball’s chance in hell at living.

“See?” Liam asks. “It’s not easy. I don’t like what I’m doing either. But if I can do something-”

“Liam, please,” Brett begs. “Please don’t go. Please. I’m safe right now. Just…” He runs his hands down Liam’s sides. “Please, you don’t know what - what’s really going on in there, what they’re doing, what they might - just don’t go, okay? Stay here. Stay safe with me.”

“What do you mean, what’s really going on in there?” Liam asks, blinking.

And Brett hesitates. He hesitates because he feels like he shouldn’t tell Liam the truth - because Adi thought it was a bad idea, but now that he’s thinking about it, she’s a doctor, probably wants a cure as badly as anyone else does.

“You have to give me a reason,” Liam says. “If I’m going to give it up I need a why, Brett.”

Brett licks his lips. “Because I want you to,” he pleads. “Because I don’t want you to die.”

Liam runs a hand through his hair. “Better than that,” he says tiredly, and heads for the door, grabbing his bag.

“Where are you going? Your keys-”

“I don’t need the keys to get out,” Liam says, “and there’s no way that you won’t answer the door when I drag myself back here.”

Brett’s bluff is called, and the only thing left to do is watch as Liam leaves.

~*~

Liam gives up smoking when Brett asks.

It’s sort of how he knows that Liam actually takes him seriously; one day, they’re walking back from practice and Brett’s already got plans for Liam, his empty dorm room, and the bed inside it, and Liam takes out a cigarette and lights up.

Brett’s seen him smoke before, but it seems to be getting worse. It might be the addiction worsening, or Liam could be using it as stress relief, but Brett will probably never know. There’s a lot of things about Liam he’ll probably never know.

“Sorry,” Liam says as Brett wrinkles his nose, and turns to puff the smoke away from them. “Didn’t realise you hated it.”

“Yeah, I kinda do.”

“Why?”

“There are better things to spend your money on, it gives you cancer, it smells gross…”

“Okay, okay, I get it, Mom,” Liam teases. He takes another drag - there’s something almost beautiful about the way he holds the cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag, but not enough to wipe the concern away from Brett.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” he says softly.

“You’ve said that.” Liam holds the smoke in his mouth, then blows it out. “Why though?”

“It’s bad for you,” Brett says. “I want you to be healthy.”

Liam looks at him, considering. “Is it really important to you?” he asks.

Brett hesitates, but Liam’s always honest with him. “Yes,” he admits.

Liam nods thoughtfully. Then, in the next step, he takes the cigarette out of his mouth, drops it to the ground, and stomps on it before bending to pick it up. It - along with the rest of the pack, nearly full by the looks of it - goes straight into the garbage bin they pass.

“What are you doing?” Brett asks.

“I’m quitting,” Liam says decisively. “I haven’t been smoking that long. It won’t be hard.”

“You’re quitting?”

“That’s what I said, yep.”

“Why?”

Liam smiles at him. “Because you want me to,” he replies. “And you’re, you know. Not horrible, so I wanna make you happy.”

“I’m not horrible, okay,” Brett teases. “I love how you’re emotionally constipated in person but over text you’ll tell me how you feel - in about twenty misspelled words.”

Liam grins. “I have a short attention span. I can’t help how I text.”

“You’re a serial emoji abuser.”

“That I’ll admit to.” Liam looks up. “This is me.”

“Come to mine,” Brett says, grabbing Liam’s wrist. “My roommate isn’t here.”

“Oh.” Liam lifts his eyebrows knowingly. “So we’re gonna fuck?”

“I mean, if you want,” Brett says sheepishly.

“Fuck,” Liam laughs. “You’ve never been assertive a day in your life, have you? Okay. But you’re buying me dinner.”

“Oh, what, now you have standards and shit? Now you wanna be wined and dined?”

“Wine is gross, just dined is okay. And yeah. Prick. I get hungry after sex. I’m not making the walk of shame on an empty stomach.”

“What do you want? Pizza? Chinese?”

“Mmm, Chinese,” Liam says wistfully. “I haven’t had Chinese in ages…”

Brett smiles, loops his arm around Liam’s neck in what he hopes is a buddy-buddy way, and drags him in close. “I’ll buy you Chinese,” he promises. “Have you ever had bubble tea?”

Liam shakes his head, looking curious. He doesn’t seem to mind Brett’s arm.

“I’ll get you bubble tea too. It’s pretty good.”

“I picked the best person to casually fuck,” Liam says, grinning toothily. “Hey, I got a new game yesterday - wanna stop by my dorm and grab it? We can play together.”

Brett realises he’s fucked around the same time he realises that he’d do literally anything to spend a little more time with Liam - maybe if they play long enough, Liam will be too tired to go home and he’ll just fall asleep with Brett. That would be pretty nice, he thinks.

He doesn’t think Liam does boyfriends, though. That’s a problem. At least for the whole “falling in love with my fuckbuddy” situation he’s got going on.

Liam splits off from him to get the game; Brett heads to his own dorm, across campus in the upperclassmen section. He’s kind of nervous. He wants Liam to stay but-

His phone pings.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 5:14PM  
U need 1 mr controller y/n

Brett thinks he’s asking if they need another controller; he responds, saying yes, then tells Liam the door will be open and to take his shoes off when he comes in.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 5:17PM  
Lol u cute  
Cute n hot :DDDD

“Oh my God,” Brett mutters, tossing his phone aside as he enters. Liam texts like there’s a squirrel on crack running across his phone screen, but something about it is endearing - and he feels kinda nice, knowing that he can decipher what Liam’s saying.

Panda Express doesn’t have bubble tea, but another place does - Brett wants Liam to have a good time, and so he makes a last-minute suggestion.

**To** : Liam Dunbar, 5:20PM  
Mr. Singh’s okay for Chinese food? Panda express doesn’t do bubble tea

The response is immediate; his phone pings five times, in quick succession. Liam’s not that great with sentences.

**From** : Liam Dunbar, 5:20PM  
!!!!!!  
Sings!!!! :DDDDD  
Best Chinese food here!!!!  
Ur the best f/b EVA! :DDDD  
So nice n sweet n hot

Brett doesn’t dignify that with an answer; by the time he’s changed into sweats, Liam’s at his door, kicking his shoes off and bounding inside, looking happy. If Liam was a dog, he’d be a golden retriever.

“I can’t believe you’re getting Mr. Singh’s,” he says cheerfully, flopping onto Brett’s bed and watching him. “I haven’t had Mr. Singh’s since you taught me how to manage my money.”

“Sorry for ruining it for you,” Brett laughs.

“I saved all the money I used to spend on Mr. Singh’s and got the game,” Liam says, and sits up, looking earnest. “I knew you’d probably like it so I thought we could play it together.” With that, he hands it over.

Brett barely looks at it. All he can think is that Liam thought about him when buying this - Liam thought and wondered if he’d like it and then decided that he would and that they should share it. Brett feels warm.

They play for a while - Brett annihilates Liam, who’s got a short attention span and resorts to literally climbing onto Brett and sitting on his chest to win - and then order their food. It’s delivered straight to them, and, when they’re done eating - at around eight thirty - Liam sighs and lies back in Brett’s bed.

“Wanna watch a movie?” he asks.

“Sure,” Brett says, surprised that Liam seems to be dragging this casual thing out as well. “What movie?”

“I don’t care. Any movie.”

Brett picks Alien: Covenant on the off chance it might scare the shit out of Liam and make him huddle close. He’s pretty much on the mark; within half an hour, Liam’s twitchy, and within the hour, he’s got his head firmly buried in Brett’s shoulder.

“Are you trying to scare me?” he whimpers.

“I didn’t think you were scared of anything, real or imaginary,” Brett says truthfully.

Liam levels him with a glare. “Well I am. You can’t make me walk home after this.”

“You live across campus!” Brett laughs.

“Don’t care. Not going.”

Unintended side effects, Brett muses, but he lets Liam use his toothbrush and rustles up an extra phone charger - and, after almost ten minutes of deliberation, finds one of his t-shirts for Liam as well.

“We’ve had sex,” Liam says, smiling. “But you want me to wear a shirt to bed?”

“I just know you normally do,” Brett says softly. “Want you to be comfy.”

Liam looks at him for a moment, then stands, pulling his own (perfectly fine) shirt over his head and slipping Brett’s on, ditching the jeans next.

Brett smiles a little. “Now who’s so cute?”

“Not me!” Liam protests.

“Sure,” Brett laughs.

“Hey,” Liam says. He’s climbing into Brett’s narrow dorm bed; his eyelids are half-shut with exhaustion. “Wasn’t this supposed to be a hookup?”

“Yeah, but then there was a good game, Chinese food and mood-killing Xenomorphs,” Brett teases. “Are you that broken up about it?”

“Nah,” Liam says. “We can fuck in the morning if you want.”

“As if any man alive will say no to that,” Brett laughs, settling into the bed with Liam.

For a while, they’re quiet. Liam’s dozing, but not really sleeping; Brett can tell by the way his breathing hasn’t evened out properly yet.

“Liam,” he says quietly.

“Mm?” Liam rubs his eyes. “What’s up?”

“Are you sleeping with anyone else? Besides me?”

“Nope.” Liam doesn’t even ask why he wants to know. “Just you.”

“Oh.” Brett’s kind of surprised. “Me too.”

“You know I don’t have energy, right? Between class and lacrosse, you’re the only fuckbuddy I can fit in.” Liam snickers. “Literally.”

“You’re saying that to flatter me,” Brett says, and Liam laughs.

“I don’t have to flatter you. I’m already getting free Chinese food and great sex out of you. What more do I have to flatter you for? Will you do my homework?”

“I can do your homework if you want to fail.”

“I’m gonna fail anyway, so sure.”

Liam’s warm. His legs are hairy. He doesn’t seem to mind tangling them up with Brett, or pushing his toes against Brett’s calf muscle, or shuffling until their shoulders and arms touch. He’s tactile and affectionate and Brett likes him for that.

“Don’t fail,” Brett whispers.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t fail any subjects. They won’t let you take lacrosse.”

Liam’s head rises from the pillow to look at him. “Would we stop if I wasn’t in lacrosse?” he asks.

“I - no,” Brett says, blankly, because Liam looks worried. “No reason to stop unless one of us wants to, right?”

Liam brightens immeasurably. “Yep,” he says cheerfully. “Right.”

“Are you always this happy?”

“You know I’m not. But right now I am.” He yawns. “Got class tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Brett says regretfully. “Unfortunately. You?”

“Nah. I’m free.”

“Actually free, or skipping class free?”

He feels Liam smile against his upper arm. “Actually free.”

Brett nods. He wants to keep talking. He likes existing here with Liam.

“Are you going home? For break?” he asks.

Just like that, Liam stiffens up, and Brett realises that he’s asked the wrong thing - it’s apparently a loaded question, and Liam will answer things candidly about how many people he’s fucking or what he’s done with who but family questions are off limits.

“No,” he mutters.

Brett swallows, licks his lips. “Okay,” he says, unsure of how to proceed. What does Liam even do if he doesn’t go home over break?

There’s a long pause.

“Are you?” Liam mumbles, still sounding tense and mildly testy.

“Not this year,” Brett says. “I’m gonna stick around.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Maybe take a summer class so I can stay in the dorms.” He turns to look at Liam’s profile in the darkness. “What about you?”

Liam shrugs despondently. “Couch surf I guess.”

Brett doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll remember this - he’ll remember this as the time he found out that Liam would rather be effectively homeless than risk returning to his family for summer break.

At the time, he wouldn’t know why. It would niggle at the back of his head, persistent and ominous, but Brett wouldn’t know what to pin it on until later. He wouldn’t know, until much, much later - months down the track - that Liam has never known a home, only rooms filled with other people’s stories and never his own.

Liam never knew _home_ until he knew Brett.

~*~

Brett can’t say he’s surprised that Liam didn’t finish college. After all, college, for Liam, seemed to be more about drinking, smoking, and lacrosse than it did to be about studying, learning and future employment.

Statistics. Liam might be incredible, but statistics were against him - Brett remembers quietly panicking in the days after Liam quit, looking up studies on dropouts and regrets and employability. Not because he was worried about financially supporting Liam, but more worried that Liam’s self-worth hinged on him not being a deadbeat redneck like his father.

Seventy percent of kids stricken with poverty never get accepted into college. Forty percent of those that do will never make it there; if you do somehow manage to circumvent these first two social and economic hurdles, chances are the third will get you, with sixty percent of them never graduating.

Liam defies odds. He always has. College might not have worked out but carpentry did, and Liam’s first paycheck had him staring at his bank account and saying, “They must’ve overpaid me. There’s no way I’m earning this much-”

Liam was earning, at the time, barely a third of Brett’s wage. Right before the outbreak, he was earning a little over half; now, his payments from the school far exceed what both their wages, combined, would look like for a month.

He’s only thinking about it because he’s staring down at Liam’s newest payslip from the Clinic, and it’s gone up again. Brett doesn’t know why.

“Good news?”

He turns. Liam’s stepping out of the bathroom, looking anaemic and tired. He’s limping.

“Your pay went up again.”

“Nice.” He slinks into the chair next to Brett. “Hey. We’ll be able to buy a house near the beach someday.”

He’s right about that, Brett has to admit. Of course, the plan of buying a house on the beach hinges on a lot of things - Trapper being cured, the Clinic not taking donations, Brett not getting infected, Liam not dying on the operating table…

His eyes skim Liam’s body before he can remind himself not to check. If Liam’s marked in a way that’s unfamiliar to him, he doesn’t want to fucking know. Doesn’t need to know.

“Do I look bad enough you won’t even make eye contact with me?” Liam jokes weakly.

Brett looks at him, finally. Tattoos. Scars. Everything where it’s supposed to be, except for the sad, slightly hurt expression on Liam’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Brett murmurs, leaning forward to kiss him. “No. You’re beautiful. As always.”

“You don’t have to lie…” But Liam sounds pleased, a little, for the compliment. “This for me?”

Brett made him lunch - bacon and eggs on toast, which is breakfast food, but Liam’s only been awake since eleven anyway. “Yeah,” Brett says. “Dig in.”

Liam does. They sit in silence for a while; Liam eats, and Brett reads the paper, which is delivered vacuum-sealed through a slot in their doorway. The apartment building is safe - specialised air filters that stop disease spreading - but Brett hardly leaves. It’s too tempting to just keep going.

Liam looks up, seeing him reading the article on the front page - news about what happens to the donors inside the Clinic, here and all over the world. “Shouldn’t believe everything you read,” he says, casual tone belying his actual feelings. “Most of it’s shit.”

“Maybe to you.” Brett turns the page. “Who’s to say this isn’t someone else’s truth?”

Liam looks uncomfortable. “Mm,” he mumbles.

Brett watches him for a moment. “How come they didn’t stop paying you?” he asks.

“The Clinic?”

“Yeah. When donations became mandatory - couldn’t they have stopped?”

Liam shrugs. “Doc mentioned something once, when he was gettin’ me ready. Geneva convention or… nah, that wasn’t it, but something about compensation or whatever. Lawsuits. I dunno.” Another shrug. “I mean like… how am I gonna live if they aren’t paying me? Can’t work.”

“I guess they want you alive,” Brett says ruefully.

A moment’s silence. “They want all of us alive,” Liam says quietly. “That’s why they’re doing it.”

“Liam… we’ve been over this, I’m never gonna-”

“You know they cry sometimes? When they have to cut us open? One guy left in the middle of one of my donations once. Couldn’t keep it together long enough to take bone marrow from me. He’d had an involuntary patient that day. Apparently the guy just screamed and screamed and didn’t let up, not while they were taking anything or after.” Liam’s watching him closely. “Sometimes I think it’s harder on them. Well… maybe harder on them than the voluntary donors, anyway. We don’t have to hurt people.”

Brett nods. “I guess it depends which you’d prefer - to hurt, or to be hurt,” he murmurs.

“I’ll always prefer being hurt,” Liam says softly. “After what my parents did, I…”

More silence. Brett never realised Liam’s parents factored into his decision much.

“How’s your pain?” he asks.

Liam smiles tiredly. “There.”

He nods. Liam shifts - he’s finished eating, which is unprecedented but amazing. “I’m sure you could help me out with that,” he murmurs softly.

“You think so?”

“I know so.” Liam tugs. “C'mon.”

He just won’t look for a mark, Brett decides. He just won’t look.

~*~

Brett’s gotten used to their post-hookup routine.

It goes a little like this: they hook up, have sex - sometimes more than once - then eat. Liam then sneaks off to Brett’s bathroom and cleans up a bit; while he’s in there, Brett cleans everything up in his room.

This night is different; he hears Liam swear, and then he’s stepping out, reaching for his sweats.

“What’s wrong?” Brett asks.

Liam looks uncomfortable. “I left something at my dorm,” he says. “Need to go back.”

“Now?” Brett asks. “It’s one in the morning.”

Liam shrugs one shoulder, grabs his shoes.

“Hey,” Brett says, reaching out to grab his wrist. “If you need something - a phone charger, or, I dunno, a toothbrush - just use mine. I don’t care.”

“It’s not that,” Liam mumbles. “Thanks though.” He’s pulling his shoes on; Brett watches for a moment, trying to work out how to proceed.

In the end, he doesn’t need to say anything. Liam sighs, rubs the back of his neck, and turns to him. “It’s medication,” he says shortly, “and I really can’t miss a dose. So I gotta go get it.”

“Oh,” Brett says faintly. “Are you… coming back?”

“If you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

Liam nods, but he doesn’t say anything else as he strides out the door, and Brett leans back, panicking a little. Medication? He didn’t know Liam took medication. What if he’s really sick? What if he’s dying and that’s the reason he’s so nihilistic?

Liam returns twenty minutes later, red-faced from the cool night and shivering a little; he’s holding a toiletries bag. He doesn’t say anything before heading to the bathroom and popping the cap on a bottle of pills.

Brett waits for him to return before speaking. “Liam?”

“Mm.”

“Are you sick?”

Liam smiles wanly. “Depends on how you mean.”

“Are you in pain?” Brett tries rephrasing. “Is this something that-”

“It’s not contagious,” Liam mutters. “Chill.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at,” Brett says. “I really don’t think you’re enough of an asshole to have sex without a condom if I was gonna catch something from you.”

Liam blinks, runs a hand through his hair, and sighs. “My body’s fine,” he says. “My brain is sick.” At Brett’s blank expression, he sighs again. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Look. I’m mentally ill. Like I’m exceptionally mentally ill given that I’m only eighteen. I’m not gonna strip buck naked and run in front of a bus, but - yeah. The meds are for mental illness.”

“Okay,” Brett says, surprised Liam told him so wilfully. “Do you need any help with anything?”

Liam shakes a pill bottle. “Just need help making my brain work the same way everyone else’s does.”

“I mean - does anyone else know?”

Liam stiffens. “No,” he mumbles. “Maybe my roommate. But I haven’t told anyone.”

Brett nods, strangely honoured that Liam apparently trusts him enough. He could’ve avoided this too - could’ve come up with a different reason to go to his dorm, or stayed there once he got back, or told Brett to mind his own business. He didn’t.

“What is it?” Brett asks gently.

Liam looks nervous when he finally meets Brett’s eyes. “I.E.D,” he murmurs. “That’s uh - intermittent explosive disorder. Anxiety. My doc thinks - well, my doc thinks I have symptoms of bipolar, as well, but… the meds for the first two seem to be covering that pretty well, if they’re there.”

“Anxiety?” Brett asks. “You don’t ever seem anxious.”

“That’s because the drugs work, and I take them. But yeah.” Liam looks at him oddly. “You don’t care about the I.E.D?”

“I’ve never seen you angry,” Brett says lightly, “so I’m guessing your meds work for that too. I don’t like the idea of you being scared.”

Liam actually smiles at him then. “I’m usually not. Sometimes I need to get the meds adjusted, or take a day off and just - chill out, you know? But I’m not - I’m not too scared to leave my dorm, I haven’t had a panic attack in months… it’s under control.”

Brett nods slowly. “Okay. You’ll tell me? If you need help?”

Liam blinks.

Brett’s brain catches up with his mouth. “Uh,” he says, “'cause, you know, we’re… friends, outside of being fuckbuddies?” He swallows. “We are friends right?”

Liam laughs. “Yeah, we’re friends, dumbass. Okay. I’ll tell you.”

Liam stays. They go to bed at sometime around two - Brett puts up with Liam’s incessant squirming for a few minutes before begging him to lie still.

“Fine,” Liam mumbles. “Your bed is too small.”

“That’s because it’s meant for one person.” He feels Liam’s smile against his shoulder. “How’s the smoking going?”

“Ah, man.” Liam rolls onto his back - half on top of Brett, what with the size of the bed - and sighs. “It’s okay. I used it to calm down. Now I have to work out like… healthy coping methods.” He snorts. “Fuck that shit.”

“I’m glad you gave it up.”

“Yeah? It’s kinda nice. I’m saving money.”

“On cigarettes. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you buying more video games.”

“At least I get to keep those.”

A pause. Brett turns his head to look at Liam - he can only just see his profile in the moonlight, the slight upturn of his nose, the swell of his lips.

“Thanks for telling me. About the I.E.D and anxiety I mean.”

“Oh.” Liam sounds surprised. “Uh - thanks for… not freaking out about it.”

“Are you worried? That people will?”

“You aren’t stupid. You’d have to be blind to not see the way people with mental illnesses are portrayed by the media. Especially anger and emotion disorders.” Liam sighs. “I was a little worried. I’m glad you aren’t a prick.”

He’d never really thought about that before - about how mental illness is portrayed on TV and in news, that is. Thinking about it now, he’s not surprised Liam doesn’t want to tell anyone.

“Sometimes,” Liam says softly, “people think we choose to be like this.”

Brett’s gut twists uncomfortably.

“Like…” Liam rolls onto his stomach, props himself up on his elbows. “People think we choose to… not be in control of our emotions, or… that we want to be anxious and scared all the time, and we… we don’t. Why the fuck would anyone choose that? It’s hard, man. The docs give you pills to make your brain work. They either make you so tired and sick you don’t wanna take 'em anymore, so you stop, or they make you better. They make you better so you go off them because you think you don’t need them anymore. And then once you’re bad again, once whatever you’ve got has control of your mind, it tells you you don’t _need_ the meds, anyway, and fuck the docs and your family and friends for trying to medicate you and make you like them.”

“Shit,” Brett murmurs.

Liam watches him. He seems to know that Brett’s trying to be sympathetic without overstepping his own boundaries. “I don’t want to hurt people,” he sighs unhappily. “I don’t. Got kicked out of school for breaking a kid’s arm once. Got kicked out of the next for totalling my coach’s car after I got dragged off the field in lacrosse. I’ve put my hands through walls and mirrors and fuck knows whatever else. But I’d rather do that than lay a hand on anyone else again.”

“I know you don’t want to hurt people,” Brett says. “That’s why you don’t let anyone close. If they aren’t close, you can’t lash out.”

Liam nods. “You kinda slipped through the cracks,” he admits. “Don’t know how you did it.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Brett says.

Liam nods. “Maybe that’s the trick.”

The air between them prickles. Liam’s eyes are noticeably blue, even in the weak moonlight. He’s breathing slowly, chest and collarbones shifting like liquid under the shadows of Brett’s dorm, and he’s watching Brett carefully.

“Liam,” he says. “This - what are-”

“Don’t,” Liam says softly, and leans down to kiss him softly. It’s different from their usual kisses; they’ve never kissed without it being a prelude to sex before. This isn’t that.

“Liam,” he tries again.

“I’m here,” Liam says. “I’m staying the night. I told you about my meds and how fucked up my brain is, and one day I’m gonna tell you - everything. Anything you want.” His eyes are glittering, Brett realises. “What do _you_ think?”

Brett’s heart is somewhere in the vicinity of his throat, and his eyes are stinging, and so his voice comes out as a whisper when he says, “Yeah, okay.”

Liam nods. Then he curls up - his head on Brett’s chest, arm and leg thrown across him, and says, “The bed seems bigger like this.”

Brett swallows. “Big enough for both of us,” he agrees, and Liam presses a kiss to his throat before they fall asleep.

~*~

_Everything. Anything you want._

It hadn’t been a promise, really, but Brett wants to call it that now and make Liam swear to him that he won’t go again.

“Hey, look.”

Brett blinks. Liam’s lying across their bed, a shoebox in front of him, holding a photo. Brett joins him, looking over his shoulder curiously.

It’s their old lacrosse team photo. Liam’s blonde here, grinning victoriously, his body tilted towards Brett’s - his arm is around Brett’s neck, and he’s making up for the distinct reservedness Brett’s photo self is putting out. Despite that, Brett can see his own fingers curled around the narrowest part of Liam’s waist, over his jersey.

Liam turns and smiles at him. “It was a good one, huh?” he asks wistfully.

Brett’s throat closes up; Liam’s smile fades, and they stare at each other. “The best,” he whispers back. “I’d go back. If I could.”

“I wouldn’t,” Liam says.

“Really?”

Liam nods. “I…” He looks down. “Before I met you, I really thought that… I’d never end up with someone who got me, or… who wanted to. I didn’t think I’d find home anywhere on this whole planet. And now…”

“Now we’ve had home for the last five years,” Brett says softly. “Almost six.”

Liam nods. He’s smiling again, but it looks sad.

“Whatever happens,” he says. “I want you to know… five years was enough. It always has been. It always will be. No matter what happens… this is home. You’re home. You gave me that. And I’m never, ever going to forget it.”

Brett can’t even smile, because his heart feels swollen and sick with dread. “I wish I could’ve given you more,” he whispers, and his voice cracks.

Liam presses their foreheads together. “You gave me you,” he murmurs. “And there’s nothing else I ever wanted more than that.”

~*~

It’s June 24th when Liam next donates.

He wakes up that morning - four forty eight, the clock flashes, hitting Brett like bullets - gets up, and has a protein shake and eggs; he comes back to kiss Brett goodbye, and his cheeks are cool where Brett’s are warm and the hair on Brett’s neck stands up, as if crackling with electricity.

It’s a normal day, at least until Liam comes home. He’s disoriented, seems confused and like he’s still doped up; Brett guides him to the couch and tucks him in and worries, something he’s disgustingly good at.

Five eighteen. Liam wakes, eats something, and turns on the news. He's still blurry, a little listless - eyes out of focus and watering as he forgets to blink.

“Today is the day,” Liam says, voice soft.

Brett blinks, looks up. Liam motions at the screen.

The news banner - the one they’ve been waiting and hoping and praying for - flashes across the screen. Trapper vaccine in progress. Not a cure… but something.

“Fuck,” Liam says, and he’s crying. “Jesus.”

“They did it,” Brett says, amazed.

“Maybe. It might not work-”

“They did it. You did it. It’s progress.” Brett’s cheeks are damp. “We’re gonna make it.”

Liam smiles at him tremulously, stands up - wobbles - and pulls Brett with him. “Shower,” he declares. “I’m taking tomorrow off.”

“Okay.”

Liam turns. The light catches his neck, freed from this morning’s hoodie, and Brett stares. Stares at the way the light is reflecting - how it’s catching on the nape, and-

Liam’s stripping, turning the shower on, and Brett’s so numb he follows suit, steps under the spray while it’s still cold and gets a laugh for the trouble. Liam steps in after him, closes the door, and shuffles to the corner, where he can lean comfortably and keep his newest bandage out of the water.

He turns to get the soap. His neck glimmers again.

“See?”

Brett looks up. Liam’s smiling at him, apparently oblivious to Brett staring at the back of his neck - the nape, which has a soft, circular scar on it.

“What?” Brett asks dumbly.

“Everything turned out okay,” Liam says. “You didn’t need to worry.”

“Yeah,” Brett blurts, and he turns Liam back towards the shower wall. “Okay.”

“You’re actin’ weird.”

“Am I?” He hears his own voice echo distantly over the rush of water, like someone else spoke with it. “Sorry.”

“’S okay.”

Brett stares. Circular mark. Back of Liam’s neck. It’s never been there before. It’s neat, precise - medicinal, surgical, in nature. Not a natural phenomena.

“Hey,” Liam says wistfully.

“Yeah?” His voice breaks, but Liam doesn’t seem to notice. He sighs, turns to Brett, puts his arms around his neck and stands close. His heart beats into Brett’s chest.

“When the cure’s out, we can finally go to the beach,” he whispers. “Let’s not put it off anymore, okay?”

“I can’t swim,” Brett croaks. “I’ll drown.”

“No.” Liam’s breath huffs against his jugular, warm and familiar. “Don’t worry. I can swim - I’ll show you how.”

“Okay,” Brett whispers, and he curls his hand around the back of Liam’s neck, feeling the ridges of the scar beneath his palm. “Okay.”

The water cascades down around them. Liam breathes. The scar on the back of his neck feels like a brand to Brett’s skin. He’s warm, like fire - like something that will engulf Brett like fuel and burn and burn until there’s nothing else in sight. Until there’s nothing else left.

Because Liam is a boy made of fire, and Brett - Brett is a boy made of twigs. It's always been this way, although somehow, Brett had forgotten what loving like immolation felt like.

“You kept your promise.” His voice sounds thick. “Remember?”

“Yeah, of course.” Liam speaks into his collarbone, and Brett can feel his smile. “I’m not like anyone else. I’m never going to die. Wouldn’t have said it if it hadn’t been true.”

Brett never knew you could lie without knowing you’re lying.

There’s silence for a moment. Brett’s heart cracks open and begins to bleed, right into his lungs. He’s drowning and he never even made it to deep water; Liam will never get the chance to teach him to swim.

“I love you,” he whispers, voice breaking. “I love you, Liam.”

Liam tilts his head back, smiles, despite the fact that Brett is probably visibly upset. “How much?” he asks, in a tone that suggests he’s playing - the way he always does, when Brett gets squishy and emotional and Liam doesn’t know what to do.

“Till I die,” Brett promises in a croak, leaning his forehead against Liam’s. “I’ll love you until I die.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He’ll make sure he keeps this one.


End file.
